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“How did you come to be a wizard?” Pippin asked.

He was perched with a full pipe on the arm of a big gnarled beech tree, feeling deliciously rested and well fed and clean for the first time in weeks. They had mostly slept since arriving in Rivendell, slept and eaten and slept again. There were scores of elves taking care of them, which Pippin was enjoying very much and Merry was not enjoying at all, and Frodo had woken up and would recover, and Bilbo – Bilbo! safe and well in Rivendell all these years – had an excellent store of Old Toby laid in. The weeks since they left the Shire felt like nothing more than a bad dream.

Gandalf let out a stream of smoke and eyed him sidelong. “How did you come to be a hobbit?”

“That,” said Pippin reproachfully, “is not the same thing at all.”

“No?”

Pippin sat up and dangled his legs down. He was close enough that he could knock off Gandalf’s hat if he only stretched out a bit, and for a moment he considered it. It was wonderful being so high up. It offered one so many opportunities. “Gandalf, it's not remotely the same.”

“Oh, I see,” said Gandalf, lifting both his eyebrows. 

This was maddening. “Our Sam is a hobbit who is a gardener,” Pippin said, as patiently as he could. “You are a Man who is a wizard.”

“Are you seeking a new vocation?”

Pippin paused. “Could I be a wizard?”

“No,” said Gandalf.

“Oh,” said Pippin, rather crestfallen. “Why?”

Gandalf puffed on his pipe. “Because you are already a hobbit, and that places a fundamental incompatibility between your nature and your objective.”

Pippin narrowed his eyes and took a long draw on his own pipe. “I think I have just been insulted,” he remarked. “I think you just insulted me.”

“If you wish to take insult, I am sure I cannot stop you,” said Gandalf. But he looked up, and Pippin saw that under the exasperation was amusement, even fondness. “But none was intended. It is as I said. I am a wizard, and you are a hobbit, and neither of us can change our natures in that regard any more than you can sprout gills and swim away down the Bruinen.”

“Hm,” said Pippin. He swung his legs and blew out a stream of smoke, studying Gandalf. “Men and hobbits aren't so different as all that, surely.”

“Men and hobbits are very similar in all the ways that matter,” said Gandalf. “Wizards and hobbits are another question entirely.”

Pippin wrinkled up his nose. “Not all the ways,” he said, and then the rest caught up with him. He paused, then said uncertainly, like a question, “But you're a Man.”

“I am a wizard,” Gandalf said.

“Wizards aren't their own kind,” scoffed Pippin. “...Are they?”

Gandalf lifted his eyebrows and leaned forward to tap the bowl of his pipe out onto the gravel of the path. “You seem to know quite a lot about it,” he said, getting to his feet. “That is the warning bell for dinner. Finish your pipe and wash up, Peregrin.”

“Wait,” said Pippin as Gandalf began down the path. “Just– hold on a moment, you can't–” He rolled onto his belly on his branch and dropped down onto the bench where Gandalf had been sitting, reaching up for his pipe before he hopped to the ground to run after him. “You can't drop something like that and then walk away–”

“Dinner, Peregrin Took,” called Gandalf firmly over his shoulder. “And put out that pipe before you return indoors or Elrond will have your head.”

“I think my aunt Acacia must be a wizard,” Pippin shouted after him, slowing as Gandalf turned down the path ahead. He was still quite sore from the journey, and Gandalf walked very quickly. “You sound just like her.”

Despite his best intentions, Pippin had no opportunity to press Gandalf for answers while they remained in Rivendell. Things became very serious very quickly after the decision was made that poor Frodo had to carry the damned ring all the way to Mordor, and even if Gandalf had not been locked in council at all hours of the day and night, Pippin had quite enough to worry about without trying to get to the bottom of whether or not his family's oldest friend was in fact a member of a hitherto unknown people.

But then they embarked, and Pippin watched Gandalf strike a flame on his thumb like it was a match to light their fire at the morning’s camp after the first long night march out of Rivendell, and he realized with dawning glee that he had hundreds of miles to get everything out of him. 

Gandalf took the first watch that day. Pippin curled up meekly in his bedroll next to the others, feeling very snug and safe with Boromir on one side and Gimli on the other, and he waited patiently for everybody else to fall asleep. Then he sat up and stepped carefully between and over the sleeping huddle of bodies, carrying his blanket with him, and went to sit with Gandalf on the far side of the fire.

“Do you do magic?” he asked without preamble, “or are you magic?”

Gandalf took his pipe out of his mouth and looked down at Pippin. “Gracious,” he remarked dryly. “I was quite certain that we walked far enough last night to tire all the questions out of you.”

“We shall have to walk much further for that!” said Pippin. “Perhaps by the time we reach Mordor I will be tired enough to leave you in peace, but I do not think so.”

“Hush!” said Gandalf sternly, and there was a true sharpness in his tone that jolted in Pippin’s insides like a missed step. “Do not speak lightly of our errand. Do not speak of it at all if you can help it, and when you must, keep your voice down. Wars have been lost by less, and an incautious word at the wrong moment might mean your friends’ lives. Do you understand?”

Pippin quailed, and for a moment he could not speak at all. He stared up at Gandalf, at the fierce dark eyes staring down at him, and he felt very small and stupid and out of place. “Yes,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

Gandalf looked down at him, and his face softened. “What's done is done,” he said. “You are forgiven, only do not do it again.”

“I won't,” said Pippin quickly. “I won't, I am sorry.”

“I know you are,” said Gandalf. He studied Pippin for a long moment. Then, just as Pippin was beginning to desperately wish that he had not left his bedroll, he turned away and added, “Both.”

“What?”

“You asked if I do magic or if I am magic,” said Gandalf. “Magic is not the correct term at all, of course, but for the intent of what you are asking, the answer is both.”

Pippin blinked, rather disoriented. Then he was scrambling around to sit closer to Gandalf, hardly able to believe his good fortune. For a moment he was entirely at a loss as to what to ask first. “How are you magic?” he demanded. 

“A privilege of my beginnings,” said Gandalf. 

“You mean you've always been magic?” Pippin asked. “You didn't… learn it?”

Gandalf hummed around the stem of his pipe. “I am always learning,” he said. “But I have always been as you see me, more or less, for all the years I have walked this world.”

Pippin rolled his lips between his teeth. “You knew the Old Took when he was young,” he said, and saw Gandalf’s face go soft and fond and distant. “How long have you known hobbits?”

“Oh,” said Gandalf, and smiled small. “One day, Peregrin, when we have come through this, we shall sit down together, you and I, and I will tell you all the stories of your ancestors that the respectable corners of the Shire have done their best to forget.”

“I shall hold you to that,” said Pippin. “But– how old are you?”

“As old as the dirt and twice again,” said Gandalf lightly. 

It was a line from an old rhyme, and Pippin snorted at him. One could not expect straight answers from the wizard. “How did you make the fire, earlier?” 

“I asked it politely and it came,” said Gandalf. “Fire likes to be asked.”

This was utter nonsense, of course, and Pippin opened his mouth to protest it, but Gandalf reached out and tugged Pippin's blanket around his shoulders before he could manage it. “I have answered your questions,” the wizard said. “Go back to bed. We have many miles to cover tonight.”

“Barely,” Pippin retorted. “You only barely answered, and anyway I only have more questions now than I did before.”

“I hardly see how that is my fault,” Gandalf said, getting to his feet. “Bed, Pippin, or the next time you come asking I shall tell you nothing at all.”

There was a converse to this, one that appealed to Pippin greatly. “If I go to bed now, you'll answer my questions next time?”

“Peregrin,” said Gandalf, exasperated, “I learned long ago to never make bargains with a Took. Go to bed.”

“I can't sleep in the daytime,” Pippin groaned, but he reluctantly took his blanket back to the space between Boromir and Gimli and settled in. But his mind was running in circles, and it was some time before he could sleep.

“What other sorts of magic can you do?” 

The stars were bright and they had been walking more than an hour, but the moon was only just rising over the peaks of the long line of mountains to their left. Pippin was a little out of breath: he had had to run from the back of the company where Strider was walking to catch up to Gandalf. 

“Many very useful things,” said Gandalf, not breaking his stride. “Like turning over-inquisitive hobbits into weasels.”

Pippin was intrigued. “Have you ever?” he asked. “Can you actually do that?”

“Would you like to find out?”

“I would, rather,” said Pippin brightly. “I could ride in your pockets.”

Gandalf gave him a look. “I am not in the habit of carrying small creatures in my pockets, Peregrin Took, and I shall not be making an exception for you.”

“That's alright,” Pippin said. “There's lots of pockets to choose from. Boromir would let me ride in his pockets.” He turned to look back. “Wouldn't you?”

“What?” asked Boromir, who had not been attending. His eyes shifted between Pippin and the back of Gandalf's head, rather alarmed. 

“Gandalf is going to turn me into a weasel,” Pippin told him. “I shall need a pocket to ride in. May I borrow yours?”

Boromir blinked. “Oh,” he said. “Ohh. Yes, certainly, so long as you are a weasel-sized weasel and not a hobbit-sized weasel.”

Pippin turned to Gandalf, caught by this new idea. “Can you make me into a hobbit-sized weasel?”

“For mercy's sake,” said Gandalf. 

As Gandalf was not in an informative mood and no transformations seemed forthcoming despite how hopefully he lingered, Pippin dropped back to walk with Strider instead.

“Do you think Gandalf could turn people into weasels?” he asked, once he had ascertained that Strider's pockets were available to him as well.

Strider was still shaking his head in exasperation, but his face was creased up with a smile. “I think,” he said, “when it comes to wizards, it is safest to assume that they can do anything they want to do.”

“Do you know any other wizards?” 

“I have met Radagast once or twice,” said Strider, nodding. “And Saruman came to Rivendell when I was a child.”

Strider had grown up in Rivendell, Pippin remembered. He had been there already when Bilbo passed through with the Dwarves all those years ago, old enough to remember it. It was a strange thought, when he looked no older than Pippin's own father. “Are you a wizard?” he asked. 

Strider barked out a laugh. “I am not. Only a Man.”

This brought up the other question, the one Pippin had almost forgotten about. He looked ahead at where Gandalf walked at the front of the party, a dim dark figure distinguishable only by the shape of his hat. “Are wizards Men?” he asked, lowering his voice. “Or are they… something else?”

Strider glanced down at him. “Perhaps you ought to ask the wizard himself.”

“He won't tell me,” said Pippin, grimacing. “He's too mysterious to speak plain.”

Strider laughed again, under his breath. “That he is,” he agreed. “I have known him since I was very young and he has always been so. I think it amuses him to keep people guessing. But be patient, and keep your eyes and ears open, and you will learn much from him that you cannot learn anywhere else.”

Two more long night marches and daytime rests passed before Gandalf had another watch. Pippin waited impatiently as everybody ate their dinner – or was it breakfast? – and did their washing up in the bitter false dawn. The sky was growing bright by the time everybody else was asleep, and Pippin finally got up from his bedroll and picked his way across the camp toward Gandalf.

“Ah,” said the wizard in tones of resignation, and Pippin felt himself wilting a little, somewhere deep. But even as he faltered, Gandalf shifted to the side to make room for him where he sat, and the tacit welcome ignited a happy glow in Pippin's chest. He scrambled up onto the boulder with Gandalf and perched there, sitting close enough to hide from the wind, and dug out his pipe.

For some time they did not speak. They only sat together and smoked, watching the fog drift down from the mountains, watching morning spill rosy across the world. 

Then at last Pippin said contemplatively, “I think if I were magic I'd make the Sackville-Bagginses think Bag End is haunted.”

Gandalf took his pipe out of his mouth and turned to look at him, lifting his eyebrows. 

“Nothing all that bad!” said Pippin hastily. “Just… perhaps some odd knocking noises, you know, rattling chains, creaks and moans. Just to set them off their dinner and make them want to live somewhere else. And then Frodo could have his own home back.”

“Hm,” said Gandalf. “Perhaps it is a good thing you do not have power, if you are going to use it to go about frightening people out of their smials by impersonating a barrow-wight.”

The name felt like a cold shock of water poured down Pippin's front. He sat very still for a moment until it let him go, then said, “I'd make a very good barrow-wight.”

“I am sure you would,” said Gandalf, but he was watching Pippin closely. 

Pippin glanced up at him, then quickly looked away. “You needn't look like that,” he said uncomfortably. “I won't fall to pieces. I don't even really remember anything about it.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Well,” said Pippin, and kicked his feet to distract his body from what his mind was doing. “The first part, of course, but then after it…” He swallowed and shook his head. “It got me last except for Frodo, anyway, so it didn't even have me for as long as it had poor Merry and Sam.”

Gandalf was still watching him quietly. It was an odd feeling, to have the wizard's full attention. Pippin had tried so hard to get it, but now that he had it he only felt rather shaky and helpless and altogether too seen. He had wanted to make Gandalf laugh at him and listen to him, not– not this.

“I don't remember it, mostly,” he added again, and shrugged. 

“I do not know of anybody else who ever came alive out of a barrow where a wight had taken them,” said Gandalf, oddly gentle.

“Well,” said Pippin. “They never tried it with a hobbit before.”

“I suppose not,” murmured Gandalf. 

Pippin looked down at his pipe. It had gone out, he was dismayed to see. “Drat this wind,” he sighed. The rest of his matches were in his pack, and it seemed a very long way away.

Gandalf reached out. “Here, my lad,” he said, and lit the bowl with nothing more than a flame dancing on his fingertip. 

Pippin stared, fascination and delight bringing him abruptly out of the sick-sweet decaying darkness of the barrow. “It doesn't burn you?” he asked. He reached out to it cautiously.

“Not at all,” said Gandalf. “But it will burn you, so have a care.” 

Pippin drew back his finger. “Why doesn't it burn you?”

“Because I made it, and it knows me,” said Gandalf. 

“Fire can't know people,” Pippin objected automatically, but his heart was not in it. He was reaching out again, cupping his hand around the little flame to shield it from the wind, feeling the warmth radiating against his palm like something living. 

Gandalf had made it. He was sustaining it somehow on nothing more than his will. It sat there, a beautiful wavering impossibility, conjured from nothing to light Pippin's pipe and warm his hands.

“Who are you?” he blurted. 

Gandalf chuckled and shook the flame away, and he did not answer.

“Can you grow wings?” Pippin asked the next night, scrambling along next to Gandalf at the front of the party. 

“Goodness gracious,” said Gandalf. “Wings. What next.”

“Well, can you?”

Gandalf let out a little huff of breath. “I have never tried.”

“Why not?”

“Because I like the shape I am now, and if I were to change it I should not be at all sure of getting it back. Whatever would I want with wings, anyway?”

Pippin stared up at him disapprovingly. “I think magic is wasted on you,” he informed him, and went to tell Merry of his success.

“Can you,” said Pippin, “and I am asking for no particular reason, mind, but can you use magic to make the wind blow hard right into somebody's ear?”

Gandalf exhaled. “Peregrin Took, you are a nuisance and a menace.”

Pippin put his hand on his heart. “Thank you,” he said earnestly.

“Why in the world do you want to make the wind blow into somebody's ear?”

“Who says I do?” asked Pippin. “Maybe I'm researching. Maybe I'll write a book one day.”

“The day I see you sit down to anything studious is the day I shall hang up my hat and leave my staff for good in Bilbo's umbrella stand,” said Gandalf. “I do not believe I have ever seen you put pen to paper to write so much as a calling card, now I think on it. Did anybody ever succeed in making you sit still long enough to learn?”

Pippin missed a step, unexpectedly stung. “Yes,” he said after a moment, curtly. “I can write, thank you.”

Not well, and the skill had come to him much later than was to be expected. The tutor his father had hired had thrown up his hands and declared him too distractible to be taught and too featherbrained to remember. It was Merry who had sat down with him and helped him hold each letter in his head until it meant something, and Frodo who had shown him how to put them together.

Gandalf paused for a moment and looked down at him. “I see that I have spoken out of turn,” he said, gentler. “I am sorry, Pippin. I did not mean to.”

Pippin's ears were hot. He glanced briefly up at Gandalf and looked away. “Never mind,” he muttered, and turned to go walk with Gimli, who would at least be able to tell him interesting things about how the ground beneath their feet was formed. 

“Supposing I could,” said Gandalf, raising his voice a little as Pippin began to withdraw. “Supposing I could, mm, do as you suggest.”

Pippin paused. “Yes?” he asked warily.

“To what purpose would you recommend I put this… peculiar application of wizardry? Purely hypothetically, of course.”

Pippin’s mouth was open. He stared at Gandalf, who, in defiance of all expectation, seemed to be actually asking to participate in mischief. He closed his mouth and glanced over his shoulder, then hurried to catch up with Gandalf, all insult utterly forgotten. “I think,” he said in a whisper, lifting his eyebrows meaningfully, “that Legolas is asleep.”

Gandalf raised his own bushy eyebrows and glanced back. The elf was walking with them in the middle of the company, keeping pace and navigating obstacles easily – but his eyes were very far away, and his face was peacefully vacant. “Pity to disturb the poor fellow, don't you think?” 

“Psh,” said Pippin. “He can sleep any time he likes, and he still gets to rest during the day like the rest of us. He's perfectly fine.”

“You have got a point there,” said Gandalf thoughtfully. “Hm.” He drew a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment. Pippin watched, half disbelieving.

Then Gandalf said under his breath, “Súlio.”

Behind them, Legolas jolted and stumbled, clapping a hand to his left ear. He blinked several times and looked wildly in all directions, but nobody was walking close enough except Sam, who certainly could not be at fault. 

Pippin reached out and clutched Gandalf's sleeve, entirely unable to speak or breathe for the dangerous mirth bubbling up in his chest and threatening to burst out. He staggered along, bent double and trying not to giggle – just like a hundred nights before on glorious half-drunken larks with his friends, a lifetime ago when the world was simpler.

“Hush, lad, you’ll give us away,” whispered Gandalf, and Pippin realized with a delighted little thrill that Gandalf was having just as much difficulty as he was. 

“Did someone…?” began Legolas, bewildered and beginning to be outraged. “Did one of you just blow in my ear?”

“I beg your pardon?” asked Boromir, half laughing and turning around. “Did one of us what?” 

Legolas was looking from face to face, utterly at a loss. “Somebody just…” he said, and faltered.

“Nobody blew in your ear, Mr. Legolas,” Sam put in, earnest and reassuring. “I've been walking right here behind you all along, sir, I'd of seen it.”

“Somebody blew in my ear,” said Legolas helplessly. “Somebody did.”

Gandalf cleared his throat. “Perhaps you were dreaming, Legolas Thranduilion,” he suggested, and glanced down at Pippin with a wicked glint in his eye. “Or perhaps you are haunted.”

Pippin was very certain that he would never in his life admire anybody more.

“Can you make people see things that aren't real?” Pippin asked on an early morning watch a week later. 

Gandalf paused where he was stirring the fire. “Yes,” he answered. 

“You could make them think they're talking to somebody who isn't there?” Pippin asked. “Or make them think they're in a house when they're actually in the middle of a field?”

There was an odd look on Gandalf's face, quite different from the tolerant annoyance he usually wore when Pippin started up. He sat down and looked at Pippin. “I could,” he answered seriously. “But I do not, and I will not.”

Pippin stared back at him. There was something heavier than the usual answers in this, and he felt his shoulders go tight and anxious. He wished he had not asked, almost, and he did not– he did not want to ask more.

But Gandalf was watching him, like he expected him to ask, like he wanted him to, and after a reluctant moment Pippin asked in a small voice, “Why?”

Gandalf reached out, and Pippin shuffled obediently nearer to sit next to him by the fire. “That is Sauron's magic,” Gandalf told him, very quietly. “He is a master of illusion, of shapeshifting and treachery. That is how he maneuvers people: through lies, through showing them what they most wish to see, what they most fear.”

“So if he…” Pippin swallowed. “We might not even… we might not be where we think we are, right now?”

Gandalf's serious face softened, and he wrapped a fold of his own robe around Pippin, a good thick woolen weave that kept out the wind, already warm. “No, my lad,” he said. “He is much diminished from the might he wielded of old. He could not exert that power over us unless we were in the same room, perhaps, or if our minds were joined in some other way. You do not need to fear that just yet.”

“Yet,” said Pippin dubiously. 

“Yet,” agreed Gandalf. “Much may happen. But for now we are here where we think we are, speaking to whom we think we are speaking.”

Pippin hunched over his knees and watched the fire. He did not say anything for a long time, but he was thinking, and his forehead drew down. 

“Gandalf,” he said at last. “...Is Sauron a wizard?”

Gandalf did not answer. He drew a long, deep breath, and then he sighed it out again and looked down at Pippin almost ruefully. “I knew what I was getting into, bringing a Took along,” he said. “And I went and brought one anyway.”

Pippin looked back at him, frowning and lost.

“No,” Gandalf added. “Sauron is not a wizard.”

“But,” said Pippin. “I don't understand. He can do wizard magic.”

“Wizard is the title of my order, not my kind,” Gandalf said. “Sauron is not a member of my order.”

Pippin stared at him. “I don't understand,” he said again slowly. But he did, or he was beginning to, and– and it was much too big for him.

Gandalf looked down at him. “There,” he said, very gently. “Never mind. You do not have to, if you are not ready.”

Pippin ducked his head down and huddled against Gandalf's side in the biting cold, and for the first time in his life he held a burning unanswered question that he did not want to ask at all.

He was quiet all the next night through their march, quiet enough that Boromir swept him up off his feet and dangled him upside down from his ankles to see if any words fell out, because surely something had gotten stuck and must be dislodged. Pippin howled his protests, deliciously terrified and laughing, and when Boromir flipped him back upright and carried him in his big warm arms for the next mile he only struggled enough for show before sinking gratefully into the comfort of being held. 

But the things he didn't dare look at too closely were still there, like sharp painful little burrs stuck to the insides of his ribs, and at last he fell back to talk to Strider.

“What is Sauron?” he asked. 

Strider looked at him and paused. “Our enemy,” he said. “The lord of Mordor.”

“But what is he?” Pippin pressed. “I thought– I thought he must be an elf gone wicked since he's lived so long, but… he's not, is he?”

Strider's face cleared with understanding. “I see,” he said. “No. Sauron is not an elf, nor a Man, though he has taken form as both in the past.” Pippin waited, and Strider added, “I wish you had asked in Rivendell. There are those there who could sing you the tale in full with far greater skill than I possess.”

“Oh,” said Pippin. “That's alright. You can just tell me.”

Strider smiled. He went distant and quiet for a few moments, and then in his rough gentle voice he told Pippin of the song at the beginning of the world, the song of which all other songs were only an echo. He told Pippin of the ones who sang it, the One who came before all others and the powers that sprang from his thought to sing with him, the Valar and the Maiar. He spoke of the discord that followed, bright Melkor and clever Mairon and their descent into darkness, their desire to remake the world in their own likeness, their willingness to destroy it to do so. 

“Morgoth who was Melkor is banished from the circles of this world,” he said at last. “He cannot return, not until the battle to end all battles at the end of time. But many of his servants remain, and the chief of these is Sauron, the Abominable, who was called Mairon.”

“He's… a Maiar?” Pippin repeated. “Sauron's a Maiar?”

“A Maia,” Strider corrected. “Yes.”

Pippin did not ask anything else for a long time. The story was one he had never heard before, strange and deep and dark and beautiful. Horrible, but beautiful. He turned it over in his head for a mile, perhaps two. Then he asked, “Is that why Sauron has his magic? Why he can make people see things and hear things that aren't real? It's because he's a Maia?”

Strider looked down at him in some surprise. He took a breath as if to ask a question, paused, and then said, “Yes.”

“And,” said Pippin. It was oddly hard to speak. He swallowed and plunged on. “There's Maia who haven't gone bad.”

“Maiar,” said Strider. “Yes.”

“Are there,” said Pippin. His heart was pounding. “Are there any of them here? In the world?”

Strider hesitated for a long moment. “Yes,” he said at last, very gently.

Pippin drew a deep breath and nodded, short and sharp. “Thank you,” he said.

He did not approach Gandalf to pester him all that night, nor the next. There were questions on questions bubbling up in him, but he felt strangely shy and smaller even than usual. This was not something to bring up offhand, he knew instinctively, not something to gossip over with Frodo and Merry and Sam. He did not know if it was secret, but he knew that it was serious, and that it did not belong to him.

So he kept it in his chest and watched it, a lovely bright incomprehensible thing, and he watched Gandalf where he stumped along with his walking-stick and grumbled and smoked and laughed. The familiar and ordinary alongside the unknowable. The shape of the letter on the page, and the meaning behind it.

Gandalf did not have first watch again until the morning they made camp on the shoulders of the Redhorn. Pippin had gotten used to being cold, but today there was no sun, only a roiling gray overhead that foretold heavy snow. The ground beneath them was stone, with no cushion of vegetation or even soil, and between the cold and the discomfort Pippin found it impossible to find his way to sleep.

He tried for an hour or more, his back against Merry's, but he was shivering so badly that it hurt. At last he gathered up his blanket and wrapped himself in it, and he went to where Gandalf sat watch. 

“Can you make people feel warm when they're cold?” he asked. 

“I could,” said Gandalf, “but it would stop your body from trying to keep itself warm, and then you might not wake up at all.”

A gust of wind found its way under Pippin's blanket, and he hunched against it. “Oh,” he said miserably, and his teeth rattled together until he clenched his jaw again.

Gandalf looked at him. A little grimace of regret and worry crossed his face and he reached out a hand to Pippin. “Come here, my lad,” he said. “There are better ways than magic to warm somebody.”

Pippin did not wait for a second invitation. He scurried under Gandalf's arm and burrowed against him, shutting his eyes against the grey light, the snowflakes beginning to fall. He did not think he had ever been so cold, and Gandalf – Gandalf had fire inside him. 

He curled up small as Gandalf gathered him up into his arms and wrapped the folds of his cloak around him. He tucked his head down and breathed the soft dark warmth as a broad hand rubbed firmly over his back and shoulders. 

“There,” Gandalf murmured as Pippin shivered and shook against him. “Don't wait so long to come to me next time, my lad. Breathe slowly, now.”

Pippin obeyed as best he could. It was easier, resting there against Gandalf's chest like he was a child again. He breathed deep and listened to the low hum of his voice, the steady beat of a heart under his ear. Warmth was surrounding him and he huddled small in the heart of it, soaking it in.

“I have you,” Gandalf told him, and Pippin whispered, “Thanks.”

He didn't know when he stopped shivering. But his body was still and heavy, thawed out at last, and he was drifting. He did not let himself sleep; he didn’t think Gandalf would like that. But he held very still and hoped he would be allowed to stay, even for just a little longer.

“Are you still with me, Pippin?” Gandalf asked at last.

“I am awake,” said Pippin, guiltily drowsy. “I didn't– I didn't go to sleep.”

“Hm,” said Gandalf, and shifted a little underneath him. “Well, you should. Keeping warm will be harder tonight if you begin the march weary.”

Pippin tucked his head down again. He did not want to move. He did not want to acknowledge that it was time. 

Gandalf stilled, and Pippin felt his arms settle warm and heavy around him again. “Alright, my lad,” he said quietly. “You may stay, if you like. Only try to sleep a little, hm?” 

Relief spread through his limbs like miruvor. He closed his eyes and felt his body go slack, his thoughts beginning to go soft and vague. He felt that he was cradled in flame, bright tongues of fire that knew him and did not burn. He reached out to it, curious, and felt a warmth answer him that came from somewhere deep, something not of the world he knew. It was drawing him down, inviting him to rest, but he held back, just for a moment. There was something, something important…

“Can you still remember it?” he asked Gandalf, his words slurring together. “The song?”

Gandalf went still for a moment. His hands paused their gentle motion over Pippin's back and shoulders. Then he drew a long deep breath.

“Yes, my lad,” he answered, and Pippin felt his hand pass over the top of his head, smoothing his hair. “Every note.”

Pippin sighed and closed his eyes, and he let sleep take him at last.

Lothlórien felt like a dream from the moment they stepped within its borders. It was as if they had stepped sideways out of time, like nothing that had happened or would happen could touch them. Even their grief seemed suspended, the breathless crush of it lifted enough that they could learn its shape before they had to walk with it again. 

Pippin did not speak of it to anyone, though Merry and Strider both tried to make him. He did not weep, not after the first shock of the loss. It did not seem real, there under the silver branches and sunlit gold, so he did not let it become real.

But they could not rest forever. 

Celeborn released them from council in the early evening the day before they were to leave Lothlórien, and Pippin, returning first to their pavilion, gathered up his pipe and matches and near-empty pipeweed pouch. He departed again quickly before the others returned and stole down alone to the riverbank some distance away where he could sit out of sight in the reeds.

He took his time packing his pipe, watching the steady flow of the river. It was easier not to miss Gandalf here, where the surroundings were strange and distinct and the rhythms of their days were altered. But they would be traveling on again tomorrow without him, and Pippin could already feel the void of his absence reasserting itself. It felt like a hole punched through his lungs, like no matter how he gasped he would never get his breath.

He struck a match and lit his pipe. Flame danced on a wizened fingertip in his memory and for a moment he went still, staring and unseeing while the match burned. 

Can you come back?

He could do anything, Strider had said. Pippin shut his eyes and groped out, clumsy and blind with anguish, for the brilliant warmth he had touched once, brighter and softer than the sun, wider than the world. 

Can't you please just come back?

The curling match bit his fingers, and he dropped it with a hiss. The flame fizzled out in the stream and the water carried it away, blackened and spent. Pippin watched it until it was out of sight.

He sat quietly and smoked his pipe until the fire went out. Then he wiped the tears from his cheeks with the heels of his hands and sniffed hard. There was nothing else to do, no other reason to linger, so he straightened his shoulders and took a breath, and he got to his feet to rejoin the remaining fellowship. 

Miles away and far above, the last light of evening broke through the clouds to clothe the peak of the Silvertine in gold and red, a dying ember springing suddenly back to flame.

Bright dark eyes flew open, and remade lungs gasped their first breath.