Fan Fiction
The Story Thus Far…
Billy Begroot was a jolly young hobbit from Bree that decided to take his puppet show on the road to the Shire. His best intentions were almost immediately put to the test when he was set upon by highway-men that attempted to rob him. Luckily for the hobbit his prized puppets, including the star attraction, Mr. Pip, were unharmed. In the East Farthing Billy met a beautiful hobbit widow, Polly Spratt, and her wily child, but romance was not in the cards. Poor Billy was no match for the memory of Polly’s dead husband nor was he a match for an ill-fated accident that he was blamed for. Our lad suffered a bit of abuse at the hands of Widow Sprat that gave him terrible headaches. Fortunately, he met Doctor Brindlebottom of the South Farthing. Unfortunately, Doctor Brindlebottom was not going to long survive his acquaintance with a certain Mr. Pip… But, ever the optimist, Billy headed out to continue his adventure…
Chapter Four: Here Be Dragons
Autumn was beginning to roll across the Shire in golden and red splendor that colored the trees richer than any dwarf’s hoard. Everyone in the village of Michel Delving was in good spirits as they all prepared for the annual harvest festival. Stalls were set up for the selling of baked goods, for arts and crafts from skilled wood workers, for stocking up on candles of fragrant beeswax for the long winter months yet ahead. It was the perfect environment for Billy to set up his little cart for his puppet show. He took the old broom from Polly Sprat and swept the ground clean for little hobbit children to sit upon. Then he put up the posts that would make up the little tent he would sit inside while he allowed the puppets to entertain the folks that gathered outside. Billy had a metal bowl set out for coins to be tossed into. He had a small hole cut in the tent so he could keep an eye on that bowl. Woe be it to any saucy child that tried to take a coin out rather than put one in! Mister Pip would immediately draw the attention of the entire crowd to any such child, thus causing the parent of the bad child to put in a copper or two more than they had intended to make amends!
Billy was in rare form that day, barely able to conceal his own laughter as the show progressed. A very good sized crowd had gathered and they were all roaring with mirth. One of the merchants from a nearby booth had come to watch the show. He was a butcher who obviously loved his work, which was easy to see from his apron pocket full of sausages that he mindlessly munched on between bouts of laughter.
When the show was over and the small children came forward to drop coins into the bowl Billy was surprised to see the butcher remain behind. Billy wished to rest after the lively performance so he came out of his little tent preparing to close up for an hour while he went to enjoy the festival himself and perhaps to grab a bite to eat.
“Oh what a wonderful show!” said the butcher as he slapped Billy on the back with a hand stained in sausage grease.
“Thank you,” said Billy with courtesy.
“I love puppets, just love them.”
Billy had been watching the hobbit throughout the show so he countered with, “And I love sausages!”
They both laughed and the butcher invited him to his own tent to enjoy a lunch for free. The butcher confessed to Billy that he was himself more than just a fan of puppets, that he had always wished to have a puppet show himself. “I have made little entertainers at home, without the wife knowing, just to amuse myself. I am working on one now. It was inspired by my job. Well, I’d love to tell you more, actually to show you,” said the butcher as he blushed with his childlike confession. “I’d love a professional hobbit’s opinion of my creation. I’ll tell you what. Come to my shop after the festival tents close for the evening. I’ll give you dinner. You will miss a bit of the evening entertainment at the festival but you will be more than happy to eat at the table of the best butcher in the village, I can assure you of that.”
Billy was flattered to be called a “professional” and gratefully accepted the offer.
Well, when the Sun went down and all the hobbit folk went to continue their celebrations in large dance tents, Billy headed to the shop of the butcher. As promised, a wonderful feast of meats was laid out for the young hobbit. The butcher himself did not eat from a plate but continued with his strange habit of munching sausages directly from his greasy apron pocket. Those he happily washed down with plentiful mugs of beer until he had worked up some liquid courage to show Billy his collection of homemade puppets.
“They are in the back of the shop. I have to hide them from my wife,” said the butcher with a bit of a drunken whisper.
Billy followed the butcher into the room behind the shop where the actual butchery was done. It was not a pleasant place and Billy immediately felt uncomfortable. The room was dominated by an enormous meat grinding mechanism that went all the way to the ceiling of the shop. It was so tall that the butcher had to climb a ladder to reach the top to drop the meat inside for the sausages. Poor Billy looked up at the thing and cowered.
The butcher was oblivious to Billy’s discomfort. But he did notice that Billy was looking at the grinder. “Do you like her?” he asked as he pointed at the huge v shaped funnel and the many gears and cranks. “She was the inspiration for my latest puppet.” With that the butcher pulled out a small wooden trunk from beneath a table that was covered with a cloth. He opened the lid and began taking out several rather simple looking puppets.
Billy smiled kindly but did not say anything.
The butcher told Billy the name of each and every puppet. They all had their own history, their own story to be told. “Ah, but they were all just practice. You’ll see. Here is my masterpiece.” With that the butcher pulled out a very well crafted monster of a puppet.
Billy gasped.
“Yes! Isn’t she lovely? She is my dragon! I call her ‘Sausagella, Queen of the Dragons’.”
Billy was actually impressed. As the butcher held the dragon puppet up and began using a funny squeaky voice as that of the dragon Billy saw the resemblance between the massive v shape of the sausage maker and the puppet’s head. At that point he did begin praising the butcher for crafting such a fine puppet.
But that was when he also felt Mister Pip pinching at him from within his pocket. Billy looked down at his friend. Mister Pip frowned back up at him.
“Would you like to hold her?” the butcher asked Billy as he went to hand the Queen of the Dragons to the young hobbit.
“Why, yes, I would,” answered Billy. Another sharp pinch came from the pocket that held Pip. Billy pushed the little puppet’s head down in the pocket. Pip’s head popped right back out again.
Sausagella was a beautiful dragon, a beautiful puppet. The butcher sighed as he watched Billy pat her on the head, stroke her muzzle. “She will never have the life with me that she should,” the butcher said. “You should take her. You could give her the life she deserves: entertaining on the road. That’s the way to do it, eh? Living in the back room of a butcher shop is no life for a dragon.”
Billy smiled and said, “That is very kind but I could not accept such a gift. She is far too lovely a puppet for my troupe.”
Mister Pip glared as though thoroughly insulted at Billy’s comment.
“No, no, I insist,” said the butcher as he pressed the dragon puppet on Billy. “I would like nothing better than to know she was with someone who could fully appreciate her.”
And so Billy accepted the amazing gift.
The evening ended well and Billy left to return to his handcart. He packed it up and wheeled it out of town until he found a safe patch of trees to sleep under. But when he made his little campfire he found that all his little puppet friends stared up at him with sorrow as he told them about his evening.
“What is wrong, my friends?” he asked.
Billy looked at Mister Pip for an answer. The puppet sat dejectedly with his hands crossed over his empty belly.
“Oh, you all wish I had brought back sausages for you? Is that it? Well, the butcher was most hospitable but I don’t think he would have been so kind as to feed our entire troupe. But he did give us a new friend to join our merry family. I’ll introduce you to her and then we can bed down for the evening. We will have a busy day tomorrow as the festival continues and I am very tired.”
Billy turned to retrieve the dragon puppet from a canvas bag only to find her gone. How could that be? He had put her inside the bag himself. Maybe she had fallen out as he shook hands with the butcher before leaving. He would go back to the shop in the morning to retrieve her.
If only it had been as simple as that. The festival was all in an uproar the next day when Billy arrived back in the village. What terrible news for Michel Delving! The butcher had died in the night, the talk spread from tent to tent as gossipy hobbits set up for the day. Billy was putting up his own little cart and tent and heard all about it. Apparently the butcher had fallen into his own sausage vat and been ground up into little links. Nothing was missing from the shop that the butcher’s wife could tell, but then she was very distraught.
Several shirriffs were poking about asking questions when Billy arrived at the butcher shop. But the shirriffs seemed more than happy to call the incident an accident. The sausage machine was so terribly tall and complicated and the ladder far too frail for the butcher’s weight after all. It was an accident waiting to happen, they said.
Billy went to pay his respects to the widow. He felt it was the least he could do. And the good hobbit widow was actually glad to see him. It turned out that her husband had told her about his dinner with Billy. She thanked him for giving her husband one final night of good company. She had secretly known all along about her husband’s fascination with puppets so she was glad that he had been able to share that with Billy. Not knowing if Billy had seen her husband’s ‘secret’ collection of puppets or not, she pulled the trunk out and opened the lid. “Here are his projects, all his little friends.”
To be polite Billy looked into the box. He immediately saw that the dragon puppet was still inside the trunk. Billy was shocked but held his tongue.
Just then one of the shirriffs stepped into the back workroom to let the butcher’s wife know that they were leaving. The shirriff, one with a green hat topped with a tall white feather, asked the widow, “Now you are sure, nothing is missing?”
She smiled and waved a hand dismissively at the hobbit. “Only some sausages from the front. But I’m sure my husband ate those himself.” She sighed as she thought of her husband’s habit of munching on sausages continuously.
With a tip of his green cap the shirriff left.
Billy took that as his cue and prepared to leave. But before he could the widow took the dragon puppet and placed it in Billy’s hands.
“Please take this. It was my husband’s best work ever. I’m sure he would want it to go to someone that would appreciate it.”
And so Billy took the dragon for the second time. He kept his hands firmly around the little creature this time as he marched back over to his cart and confronted Mister Pip. Before Billy could utter a word he noticed that Pip looked different. His belly was quite plump looking. “Now Mister Pip, we need to have a talk.”
The puppet looked up with innocent eyes. One of his hands pointed toward the performance tent where children were already gathering.
Billy looked at them then back to the puppet. “This isn’t over yet. I need to ask you some questions later.” But with that Billy prepared to get all the puppets out of the cart for the day’s performance. He thought maybe he should have the dragon make a brief appearance in the show in honor of the butcher. But when he went to put his hand inside the dragon he found a rope of sausage links. Billy turned as white as a sheet and quickly drew his hand away, fearing that the butcher himself may have been ground up in those links.
But the show had to go on! Hobbits were waiting! Mister Pip was ready to perform! Billy set the dragon aside and the show went on with the regular schedule with only Mister Pip as the star. And so poor frightened Billy took Mister Pip and the others and set about making the children that waited laugh and forget their worries. If only Billy could forget his own. But Pip kept one eye on Billy and one eye on the dragon that sat silent in the cart. Pip was a master actor and he made sure the show went as planned and that the metal bowl sang with the sound of coins being dropped into it. There was room for only one star in the show and that was he.
Continued on Fan Fiction 2
posted 03-27-2020