Fan Fiction
Daniel Smith
Now everyone knows Mister Pip, right? What a wicked little fellow he is! What joy and laughter the naughty little beast has brought to hobbit children from Bree to the Shire to even the wandering hobbits of the wild. Old Mister Pip has a long history that stretches back more years than many would like to admit. While he might be relegated to a child’s entertainment now he was once something more for the grown up set. Yes indeed he was. Just a puppet you say? Not at all! And Billy Begroot would have been the hobbit to tell the tale, but of course he lived long, long ago. And Billy ended up, well, let’s just say he went on quite an adventure.
Poor Billy, his grandfather had just passed away. But luckily for Billy his grandfather had left him his puppet business, if one could call it a business. It was a small moth-eaten old tent and cart along with Mister Pip and his fellow puppets. Well, as any good hobbit would do, Billy decided to look on the bright side and to take the puppet show on the road. The folks of Bree-land loved Mister Pip and surely Billy could earn a decent living with the show. So he headed out to Staddle, Archet, and Combe besides his own village of Bree with his little troupe of puppet actors. Everywhere he went he expected the show to be a hit.
A hit, a hit, a hit!
For that is what Mister Pip loved to do best, hit his fellow puppets. He was the scamp of the puppet world, a foul tempered puppet that could turn instantly into the most charming liar or courtly fellow, eliciting laughter and applause. Wherever the play was set, and with whatever storyline the tale would follow, Mister Pip always brought his stick to bash the other puppets when they least expected it. But by the end of each show the puppet had learned his lesson (and taught a lesson or two to the crowd) and ended up the hero.
Alas for Billy the hobbit, the show was not a hit. The Big Folk of Bree-land did not understand the intricacies of the hobbit humor. The hobbits themselves had grown cold to the ways of the past and did not want their children to see the show which so many felt was too violent in a day and age when highwaymen and worse were upon the roads. And so it was that Billy’s grandmother came up with the idea that he try his hand with the show in the Shire.
“Folks are more in tune with the old ways there, not so rush - rush as folks are here in Bree,” Granny said. And besides, she knew the lad would never make it in the family barrel making business. He just was not that kind of lad. Entertainment was perfectly suited for her hobbit grandson, not labor with his hands. He was so like his grandfather, she thought. The old gaffer had been right to leave the business to Billy. “Be bold, Billy, take the show on the road!” she said.
And so he did.
It was the beginning of what promised to be a wonderful year full of adventure when Billy sent out west for the Shire. He loaded the tent and puppet troupe into his little pull cart and headed out on the road. It was his first night of traveling and the evening was so beautiful that he decided he would camp by the roadside early and have a nice dinner rather than trying to rush on through the night. No need, he thought, to arrive late in the night at the Brandywine Bridge with hopes that there would be a welcoming inn and an innkeeper prepared to rise from his bed to accommodate a hobbit from Bree! The trees would be his roof and the grass his soft bed.
Billy set about making a little campfire to cook up his meal. He settled down to enjoy the fire and took Mister Pip out and put him on his hand to have a conversation with his little friend. “Will you look at those stars, Mister Pip? Beautiful, just beautiful.”
Mister Pip tipped back his head and gazed up at the brilliant spray of stars across the night sky. He nodded his head enthusiastically.
“Ah Mister Pip!” said the hobbit as he smiled at his puppet, “We have found a great job together, haven’t we?”
Mister Pip smiled back.
“Grandfather would have been proud of you taking such good care of me, my little pal,” said Billy as he put the puppet back in its wooden case with the others. Billy had a smile on his face the entire time that he tended his campfire. He began cooking some sausages and mushrooms. He cut a few tomatoes and tossed them into the pan as well. A nice drink of beer from his travel bag was just the ticket to end the evening. Then the hobbit put his hands behind his head and settled into his bedroll for the night, looking up at the sky.
A falling star whisked across from one horizon to the other.
“D’ja see that?” the hobbit asked the stored away Pip. “Make a wish now! I know what I’ll wish for. I wish for the hobbits of the Shire to appreciate our talents. That’s what I wish for.” Billy grew thoughtful as memories of his grandfather came to mind. “Most of all I wish for Mister Pip to always be my little saving grace.” Billy sighed wistfully and turned his head to look at the box of puppets in his cart just before he fell asleep and whispered, “Thank you, grandfather.”
And so Billy fell asleep.
If only it would have been a night of good sleep. But it wasn’t to be. Alas, no. The smell of the food had wafted across the landscape and caught the attention of those that lurked along the road. There were many dangers in the wild those days. But it was a couple of Big Folk, highwaymen of no accord, that caught the scent of the poor hobbit’s dinner. The hands of the men that grabbed Billy were huge and ugly as they rudely shook the hobbit awake.
“Ha!” laughed one of the men, “just a hobbit, foolishly out on his own!”
“Tie him up, quick now,” said the other man. “And gag his mouth so he cannot call out for help! I’ll go through his things.”
So one of the men yanked Billy up by his shirt collar and began pulling the poor hobbit towards a tree. The man laughed as he tried to untwist a length of rough rope to tie up Billy. The rope was harsh and dug at the hobbit’s wrists. Billy’s heart was breaking as he watched the other pitiless man rummage through his belongings on the cart. The worst was when the hobbit saw him begin to handle the box of puppets. Billy struggled against his ropes and yelled for them to leave the box alone.
“I bet he keeps his money in this,” said the one man.
The other man looked harshly down at Billy. “Y’d better shut up and stop all that shouting, or I’ll clobber you good and hard.”
“Must have some kind of a hidden compartment,” said the other as he turned the box over and began smacking the bottom in an oafish attempt to unlock its secrets. All the puppets fell out onto the dirt.
Billy felt his heart leap in his chest.
Mister Pip seemed to grip the upturned box in a desperate attempt to wrest it from the bandit as one of his little hands got caught in the hinge of the lid. His little eyes glittered and his stick swung back and forth in his other tiny puppet hand.
“Leave my puppets alone!” shouted Billy.
Oh the Big Men did not like that, not at all. The last thing Billy saw before his vision went black was the one robber reaching down to grab at Mister Pip while the one that held him lifted a huge fist in the air...
Billy fell into darkness and did not awaken until the morning Sun peeked Her pretty head above the horizon. His head hurt as he rubbed his eyes. That was when he realized that the highwaymen had apparently not tied his hands behind the tree as they had intended. Instead the rope lay abandoned on the grass near the tree. The hobbit jumped to his feet and ran to his little cart. The box of puppets lay on the ground with all the little actors in a pile on top. And standing guard over them was Mister Pip with his little stick at the ready to defend his friends.
Billy looked about the camp for any sign of the robbers. He could not see hide nor hair of them. The campfire was cold grey ashes. The few things he had seen disturbed by the Big Folk were just where they had fallen. Billy checked his cart for where he actually had his money hidden and he found the small bag of coins still there, untouched. He scratched his head in wonder before going back to his puppet friends to put them back in their box.
“Well, that was a close call…” began Billy. Then he got a better look at Pip in the brightening sunlight. There was blood on the puppet’s stick. “Who’s a naughty fellow, Mister Pip?” he asked in surprise.
Billy looked about the ground of his campsite. There indeed was blood here and there and signs of a struggle. But there was no sign of the men. The hobbit was not about to second guess his good luck. He packed up his cart and immediately headed out on the road west toward the Shire. Perhaps someone had come along in the night and scared the ruffians away. Perhaps a Barrow Wight had risen from the nearby haunted Downs and come in search of warm blood! Whoever had taken out the highway men probably did not notice the little hobbit in the dark. Billy shivered at his own creative imagination and hurried his steps along the road. There was no sight so welcome as that of the Brandywine Bridge when Billy of Bree finally made it safely to the Shire. He breathed a great sigh of relief and pulled Mister Pip from his front pocket where he was determined to carry him from now on for good luck.
“Look ahead there Pip, the Shire. Are you ready for adventure?”
Mister Pip smiled back and nodded his head yes.
And so they crossed the bridge together.
to be continued. . .
posted 02-16-2019