The Adventures
of
Frodo Gardner

Volume I
Where Many Paths and Errands Meet
By Dolores J. Nurss

Chapter 7, Part 7
A Borrowed Face
(September 23, 1451)

Frodo smelled the sweet fragrance of kingsfoil, and felt the warmth of its steam upon his face. He opened his eyes to delicious autumn daylight spilling into his bedroom, with a feather quilt wrapped snug around him.
 
"He's awake," said his father, setting aside the bowl to stroke a curl from Frodo's brow. Frodo caught a spicier scent somewhere in the background.
 
"Is he warming up any?" asked Merry, as he fed wood into a blazing fire in the grate.
 
"Better. Here, lad--sit up and have some of this tea." Frodo sat up with the help of his father's firm hands at his back. He looked at the bedroom all around him. By day it appeared eccentric indeed, but only in the most fun kind of way, filled with bright-colored knicknacks and amusing surprises. The tea fit right in, its flavor enriched with hot, bright spices from hot, bright lands.
 
"I had the most alarming nightmare..." he began, then stopped and stared at their concerned faces. "No. You wouldn't fuss over me like this if it had been a nightmare, would you?" He saw his dew-soaked nightshirt crumpled on the floor.
 
"What do you think, son?" Papa ruffled his hair and sat back down in the chair beside the bed, as Uncle Merry perched on the bed's foot. "We ran out when we heard the screams, and found you lying on the lawn, just as cold as death, smack dab next to the High Hay. Now would you mind telling us exactly what happened?"
 
The two older hobbits listened gravely as Frodo related all that had occurred, omitting only his opinions on Brandy Hall decor, pausing now and then for sips of tea that radiated heat throughout his chest and middle like returning life. Merry stared into his own hands in his lap as he listened, then got up and paced, peering anxiously out the window.
 
"It's the wights," Merry said at last. "Rumor says they've crossed the Withywindle, and now I believe it."
 
"Wights?" Frodo asked. "Do you mean barrow-wights? But I thought they stuck to their barrows."
 
"Not anymore. Without Sauron's power behind them they're weaker than before--or you'd be dead by now, Frodo--but without his will to bind them they can leave their posts and find a will of their own, which seems to attract them to greed."
 
Sam stamped a foot. "My son ain't greedy! As a matter of fact, he's got to be the ungreediest hobbit I've ever laid eyes on."
 
"No, but he was the target of some greed last night. And envy. Wights like envy." Merry frowned in thought, then smiled. "In fact, it's probably Frodo's character that saved him--the wight couldn't stand to hear all that talk about giving gold away and wanting nothing more than what one already has." Merry stood and walked over to the night-stand, where he picked up the pretty little glass with its pink gems all around the rim. "By the way, Frodo, what is this? We found you gripping it for dear life."
 
"Oh, that. It's a magnifying glass--a gift from my little sister, May. Her most prized possession, in fact." He laughed. "I think she believes it will bring me luck."
 
Merry tossed it up and caught it again. "It might at that. Wights--and other evil things--lose power in the presence of anything freely given out of love." He handed it to Frodo. "I suggest you keep it with you at all times, lad." Then he walked back to the window again, leaning on the round sill, an anxious look deepening the lines in his brow.
 
Frodo lay back on his pillows and studied the little lens sparkling in the bright sun, smiling despite himself. "That other Frodo went into Mordor with the Phial of Galadriel, full of magical water and the light of a sacred star--and you're sending me there with a child's toy!" He kissed the rim. "Not that I'm complaining. Dear little May! I wonder if she knew?"
 
Merry smiled briefly, saying, "I'm sure she did, on some level--the girl has inherited her father's wise heart." But the smile soon passed. Frodo had never seen Merry look so little like his nickname. Frodo shot a quick glance at his father, but Sam shook his head so slightly that only another Gamgee could have caught it. For a long while the three of them had nothing more to say. Frodo just lay there and soaked in warmth and life, glad to have no further demands for the moment.
 
At last, however, he had to ask one question that troubled him the most. "Why did the wight look like you, Uncle Merry?"
 
Merry didn't reply at first, but bit his nails a moment staring out the window. Then he moved to the fire and stared at it awhile instead. "It's the pipeweed," he said at last.
 
"Huh?" said Sam, as Frodo asked, "Wights like pipeweed?"
 
"No," said Merry, "But the men of Rohan do--now. I've taught them to like it." He paced the room again. "I thought no harm of it, at first, and they became our best customers. The whole Shire has profited--you, Sam, with your Longbottom holdings, Pippen with the Took pipeweed fields in the Southfarthing--we've all done very well by Rohan's new desire for smoke."
 
"So what's wrong with that?" Sam asked.
 
"What's wrong is that Rohan isn't full of hobbits. I'm starting to wonder if pipeweed might affect men differently. You hear things in the import/export trade that you don't catch wind of otherwise. Oh, I'm sure it's harmless enough for Ol' Strider, and Numenoreans like him--they've got constitutions nearly as sturdy as ours. And the men of Bree seem to take no hurt from it, either (Gandalf hinted once that they might be closer kin to hobbits than anybody realized.) But the men of Rohan, and Dunland, and Dale get coughs when they've been smoking for awhile. And if they keep on smoking, I hear, they get sickly, and some of them die young."
 
Frodo said, "Why, that's horrible! So why do they keep buying it from us, if it does them no good?"
 
Merry said, "I don't understand it myself, but once somebody starts to smoke, it gets harder and harder to stop. Even the proud wizard Saruman found himself begging for a little leaf--and he didn't want to admit that he smoked at all! Sam, you know how awful it feels when you're stuck out in the middle of the wilds and your pouch runs out."
 
"I dunno, Merry--I quit some years back. I just sorta lost interest."
 
Merry stepped over to him and lifted the jewel on its chain from his breast. "Yes. I remember the year that you quit. And I remember when our old friend Frodo 'lost interest', too."
 
Sam pulled the gem back. "Are you trying to say that pipeweed--plain ol' pipeweed!--has some kind of ringlike power?"
 
"Like I said, I don't quite understand. I haven't put together all the pieces yet. But that wight taking my form last night tells me something--warns me."
 
"Warns you of what?"
 
"That I haven't wanted to put all the pieces together." Merry gestured about at all the foreign furnishings. "I've tripled the Brandybuck fortune on pipeweed exports, more than any other harvest in The Shire--and all I had to do was hurt my friends. Isn't that enough to help a wight borrow my face?"
 
"You had no idea, Merry. You still don't know for sure"
 
"I suspected. Now I have to set things straight somehow."
 
Sam sighed and poured himself some tea. "There'll be hell to pay, you know," he said after a sip. "You're not the only one turnin' a tidy profit off of Rohan's smokes."
 
"And as Mayor, Sam, you'll have your hands full if we do have to cut back the trade." He grinned suddenly. "Sure you wouldn't rather fight another bout with Shelob?"
 
Sam grinned back. "Now that's putting it in perspective!" He finished his tea in one gulp. "Anyway, I can't battle back angry hoards of pipeweed farmers with a sword like I did her, since Sting's going south with Frodo."
 
Merry said, "And so am I, come to think of it."
 
Frodo sat back up again at that. "What? Really? You're going with me? How wonderful!"
 
"Easy, young fella. I'm not going all the way--just to Rohan, to meet with King Eomer and tell him my concerns. But it means your road and mine will match for awhile."
 
Sam said, "You know, Merry, that wight warned us of more than a problem with pipeweed." He leaned forward, his face grim. "You and me, we pride ourselves on our parts in smacking down the hornet's nest and destroying the hornet-king. But we've still got a whole lot of hornets unaccounted for, roaming around, trying to find themselves new nests. Maybe they're less strong than in our day, but they're wilder--under nobody's control. In the old days we could kind of figure out a bad thing's moves by where it all fit in the Dark Lord's plans. Now we don't know what to think."
 
Merry said, "Then we'll just have to figure it out as we go."
 
"You will--I've got my hands full with The Shire. And I promised Rosie I'd come straight home from Bree, however the business there might go. But Merry," and here he clasped his friend's strong hand. "I can't tell you how grateful I am to know that you'll be riding by my son's side."
 
"For a little while," said Merry, as Frodo thought "Riding!" and suppressed a groan. Only much later did it dawn on him that neither of his elders even pretended to doubt how he'd answer the King's messenger.