Revision, connection
Mar. 25th, 2004 11:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rabidsamfanTwo previously seen storybits, connected and with revisions:
Didn't get as far as I hoped due to many phone calls tonight.
"Rosie, has there been any word from Sam?" Frodo asked when she came in to open the curtains in the morning.
"Not yet, Mr. Frodo," she said, but she straightened a moment later and shielded her eyes with one hand. "Wait. That's him."
Frodo got out of bed and went to the window. He could see see a distant figure, coming slowly down the Hill, with a pony following lamefooted behind. She was right, it had to be Sam, for as the sun rose higher, it glinted off the gold mail he still wore when he travelled in case any of the ruffians had lingered. "I wonder what happened to Bill," Frodo said, reassured in an odd way that it was the pony’s injury that had delayed Sam’s return. Sam would never mistreat Bill; not even to rush back to Hobbiton.
Rose jumped a little at the discovery that Frodo was beside her. "Oh, Mr. Frodo, are you sure you should be out of bed? You took such a bad turn the other day."
"It was a passing thing," he reassured her, and at her doubtful look smiled. "Truly. Please don't tell Sam about it. He'd only fret."
"He's turned aside..." Rosie said, her attention going back to the window at the mention of Sam.
"Going to see the Gaffer, I expect." Frodo said, fondly. "Sam tends the things he loves."
"Well he doesn't love himself much then," she said indignantly. "As tired as he's been the last two times he's come home, you'd think he'd stop for a day or two. And what kept him so long this time I don't know. He drives himself like he's got to see the whole Shire put back the way it was and he's the only one can do it; and if he'd just once ask for help he'd find out that I..."
"That you love him?" Frodo said, into her sudden silence.
"I do," she whispered. "But it's you he looks for first."
Frodo didn't know what to say to that. To his astonishment, she reached for his maimed hand and took it in her own, much the way that Sam did sometimes, to reassure him that it was not shameful. "He won't say what happened, except that you had a hard time of it," she said softly. "Says it's not a story he can tell, and then goes and works all the harder so he can sleep without dreaming. Sam without words! All my life I've listened to him telling tales, and now the one tale I most want to hear and he can't bear to tell it to me."
"It's a year ago today since I knew he was coming home," she went on.. "But he's not arrived yet, not all the way, has he? No more than you have."
"It wasn't home we found, when we came back," Frodo found himself answering, his eye following the line of small saplings that should have been tall trees. "Not the Shire we'd dreamed about -- the one he held in his heart." He smiled at the lass before him, glad to have someone to talk to about Sam. "He held you in his heart, too."
"I'd have gone with him if he'd asked me," she said, her bright blue eyes meeting Frodo's. "To see the elves and all. I've dreamed of it since I was a littling. But he never did ask."
"He couldn't. Gandalf made him promise to keep the secret. And Merry and Pippin had guessed beforehand. I should have left them all behind and safe, if I could."
"You'd have broken Sam's heart if you had," Rosie said. "And the ruffians would have broken his head when they started digging up Bagshot Row. He'd have been in the lockholes sooner than Will Whitfoot! There wasn't no safety here, Mr. Frodo. Not while the Enemy was hunting the Ring and the Shadow growing all the while."
"And then Saruman came and made things worse," Frodo said.
"No," she said, her eyes distant. "No the worst was before -- wakin' up in the morning and feeling like there wasn't no point in fighting back against the changes anymore than you could hold back the rain by shouting rhymes at it. Waitin' for winter to end, and the sun so thin in the sky it couldn't hardly be said to be shinin' at all."
"I never knew the Shadow reached so far," Frodo said sadly.
"And why not? It's the same air here as anywhere else.”
”Sam knew,” Frodo confessed. “He saw what might happen to the Shire in Galadriel’s mirror; the Gaffer being turned out and all. But we had still a long way to go to Mordor, and he chose to come home with me or not at all.” Frodo put his maimed hand against the windowpane, letting the sun shine on the scar as it shone on the scars on the Hill. “I’d hoped we’d prevented his vision from coming true.”
”That’s it,” Rosie said, as if she’d been given a key to a lock. “That’s why he’s doing it. Don’t you see, Mr. Frodo, he blames himself. That’s why he won’t take any help.” Her eyes were bright with excitement. “Oh that’s got to be it. You’ve got to talk to him, tell him it’s all right. He’ll listen to you.”
”But… I don’t understand.” Frodo said.
”Please,” Rosie begged. “Please talk to him. Or one of these times he’ll go off and when he gets too near the borders the wind will take him off and we’ll never see him again.”
Frodo wasn’t sure about that, but she was worried, and he wanted to talk to Sam in any case, so he smiled at her and patted her shoulder. “We can’t let that happen. I’ll go this morning if you like, but you’ll have to let me get dressed first.”
She kissed him on the cheek, the way she kissed her brothers when they brought her ribbons from the village. “I’ll have your breakfast ready!” she promised, dancing to the door. “Oh, thank you!”
When Frodo reached the row of new smials that had been built at the back of the leveled sandpit he found the Gaffer out in the morning light, mixing mulch and dirt to go into the raised beds that Sam had had built to make it easier for him to reach them. The old hobbit touched his hat when he noticed Frodo. “Good morning, Mr. Frodo,” he said.
“Good morning, Master Gamgee,” Frodo answered.
“If you’re looking for that pony, you’ll have to go along to the blacksmith, for he’s thrown a shoe. But if you’re looking for Sam, inside,” waving a welcome to Frodo to enter his new home.
“Thank you,” Frodo said, and went on in.
He found Sam slumped in the Gaffer’s chair, his breakfast plate forgotten on the floor beside him. He turned his head a little as Frodo came in out of the bright morning light.
“Well it's gone.”
Frodo thought Sam was talking about the Ring until he saw that Sam was turning Galadriel's box in his hands. "There was a wee bit left, but I couldn’t do no more, and I didn’t know as it would stay good past this Spring, so I stopped at the Three Farthing Stone on the way and gave it to the wind." He handed the box to Frodo. "I hope that was the right thing to do."
"I'm sure it was, Sam," Frodo said, opening the small box in his hands. A single grain of dust clung to the bottom, so tiny that only the glow of its magic gave it away. How many trees had Sam planted in these few months? Hundreds at least, perhaps thousands. So many grains of dust would fit into even this small a box, and he'd watched Sam planting the chestnuts along the Bywater road, using tweezers to place a single speck of Galadriel's gift with each of the new trees. There must hardly be a village in the Shire that hadn't seen Sam come through since fall.
Small wonder he was tired.
Frodo touched Sam's shoulder and for a long moment he saw his friend and servant with the strange new vision that the Ring had bequeathed him -- not as a hobbit, but as a tree that has been roughly uprooted and washed downstream until it comes to a muddy place and tries to take root again.
The vision passed, and as his eyes adjusted to the dimness of the smial he realized that Sam was pale and drawn, and almost as thin as he’d been last March. Rosie was right. A puff of wind would put him on the road again.
Frodo let the bittersweet temptation linger for a moment. How marvelous to leave the troubles of the Shire behind. How soothing to walk in the wilderness again with Sam beside him and Lothlorien ahead, and no burden to trouble either of them as they sat and shared a bit of supper.
“Sam, you addlepate, have you let your breakfast go cold?” the Gaffer stood in the doorway, peering at the half-filled plate by his son’s feet. “There’s no call to go wastin’ vittles.”
“You can have it, Dad,” Sam said, with the careful clarity that they’d learned worked best in the face of his father’s deafness. “I had a good breakfast before I started out this morning.” He started to lever up, but Frodo stopped him, and shook his head as he bent to retrieve the plate.
“Not this time,” he said. “It’s all right, Master Gamgee. I’ll see to Sam.”
“Well and good, Mr. Frodo,” said the old hobbit, unoffended. “He might listen to you when he don’t listen to sense.” He picked up a trowel that he’d left on a shelf by the door and went outside again.
Frodo put the spoon into Sam’s hand and the plate onto his lap.
“You need to eat, Sam,” he ordered. “At least a few bites more. And then you need some proper sleep. You’ve worn yourself out with all this traveling.”
Sam almost smiled for a moment, and he dutifully ate a bite of the porridge, but then he put the spoon carefully down. “Maybe after I’ve slept some,” he said.
Frodo thought of all the breakfasts he’d barely touched and forbore from chiding Sam. “If you’re sure, Sam.”
“I am.” Sam pushed himself out of the chair, and stumbled towards the bedroom. Frodo followed him and helped him get out of the heavy mail shirt. Sam was too tired to make more than a token protest, and Frodo waved it aside.
“I don’t mind, Sam. You can’t sleep in all that.”
“I did on the road,” Sam said, rocking gently where he stood. “It don’t matter.”
Frodo realized that there were tears running down Sam’s face, and steered his exhausted friend into the bed. “What is it, Sam?” he asked.
“It’s Gollum,” Sam said, turning his head on the pillow as if he were ashamed to have said as much.
Gollum? Frodo sat very still as the memories of Smeagol danced in front of his eyes. “What about him?” he asked, when he could speak again.
“A year ago today he fell, Mr. Frodo, and ain’t nobody grieved for him yet.” Sam shivered under Frodo’s hand, like the Mountain had shaken with hidden torments.
“And aren’t you grieving for him now, Sam?” Frodo said, pulling the blanket up to Sam’s shoulders. “He’s not forgotten, Sam. I promise.”
“But he’s gone,” Sam wailed. “And he didn’t have to be, or Gandalf wouldn’t’ve come to the mountain with three eagles and not just two. And it’s my fault. I never thought about how hard words hurt.” For a moment his eyes went to the window, where the Gaffer could be seen puttering among the flowerbeds. “I wonder sometimes… he was so quietlike there on the stairs… If I’d not called him a sneak…” Sam curled into a tight, miserable ball, trying to hide his sobs, and all that Frodo could do was stay and rub his shoulders, and wait for the storm to pass. It didn’t take long. Sam was too weary. In time he uncurled, wrung out but for a last few shudders, and waited for Frodo’s judgment.
“I hurt him first and worst at the pool by Henneth Annun,” Frodo told Sam, admitting it aloud for the sake of lost Smeagol. “He might still have come to me if I’d told him the truth, but I never gave him the chance.” He used his handkerchief on Sam. His own tears burned hot inside, but he wouldn’t… couldn’t cry.
“You meant no harm,” Sam said, patting Frodo’s hand weakly, as if he could see Frodo’s distress in spite of eyes that would barely stay open. “And you’d been woke out of a sound sleep, and the first good bed you’d seen in a long time.”
“Just as you’d been wakened on the Stairs,” Frodo reminded him. “There’s no good in wondering about might have beens, Sam. We did our best.”
“I’ll believe it if you will,” Sam murmured, melting into the pillow.
Frodo waited, but Sam didn’t speak again, and his breathing softened. “It wasn’t your fault,” he whispered, when he was sure that Sam was sleeping. “None of it was.”
It wasn’t until he got outside, all the way to the stone wall that marked the edge of the old hillside and the new garden that he was able to cry. The dreams made sense now, horrible sense, and he could deny them no longer. So he sat in the winter grass and leaned on the cool stones of the wall and wept, not knowing if he wept for Smeagol, or Sam, or for himself. And after a time, Rosie found him there, and gathered him into her arms and let him cry on her shoulder without saying a word.
Didn't get as far as I hoped due to many phone calls tonight.
"Rosie, has there been any word from Sam?" Frodo asked when she came in to open the curtains in the morning.
"Not yet, Mr. Frodo," she said, but she straightened a moment later and shielded her eyes with one hand. "Wait. That's him."
Frodo got out of bed and went to the window. He could see see a distant figure, coming slowly down the Hill, with a pony following lamefooted behind. She was right, it had to be Sam, for as the sun rose higher, it glinted off the gold mail he still wore when he travelled in case any of the ruffians had lingered. "I wonder what happened to Bill," Frodo said, reassured in an odd way that it was the pony’s injury that had delayed Sam’s return. Sam would never mistreat Bill; not even to rush back to Hobbiton.
Rose jumped a little at the discovery that Frodo was beside her. "Oh, Mr. Frodo, are you sure you should be out of bed? You took such a bad turn the other day."
"It was a passing thing," he reassured her, and at her doubtful look smiled. "Truly. Please don't tell Sam about it. He'd only fret."
"He's turned aside..." Rosie said, her attention going back to the window at the mention of Sam.
"Going to see the Gaffer, I expect." Frodo said, fondly. "Sam tends the things he loves."
"Well he doesn't love himself much then," she said indignantly. "As tired as he's been the last two times he's come home, you'd think he'd stop for a day or two. And what kept him so long this time I don't know. He drives himself like he's got to see the whole Shire put back the way it was and he's the only one can do it; and if he'd just once ask for help he'd find out that I..."
"That you love him?" Frodo said, into her sudden silence.
"I do," she whispered. "But it's you he looks for first."
Frodo didn't know what to say to that. To his astonishment, she reached for his maimed hand and took it in her own, much the way that Sam did sometimes, to reassure him that it was not shameful. "He won't say what happened, except that you had a hard time of it," she said softly. "Says it's not a story he can tell, and then goes and works all the harder so he can sleep without dreaming. Sam without words! All my life I've listened to him telling tales, and now the one tale I most want to hear and he can't bear to tell it to me."
"It's a year ago today since I knew he was coming home," she went on.. "But he's not arrived yet, not all the way, has he? No more than you have."
"It wasn't home we found, when we came back," Frodo found himself answering, his eye following the line of small saplings that should have been tall trees. "Not the Shire we'd dreamed about -- the one he held in his heart." He smiled at the lass before him, glad to have someone to talk to about Sam. "He held you in his heart, too."
"I'd have gone with him if he'd asked me," she said, her bright blue eyes meeting Frodo's. "To see the elves and all. I've dreamed of it since I was a littling. But he never did ask."
"He couldn't. Gandalf made him promise to keep the secret. And Merry and Pippin had guessed beforehand. I should have left them all behind and safe, if I could."
"You'd have broken Sam's heart if you had," Rosie said. "And the ruffians would have broken his head when they started digging up Bagshot Row. He'd have been in the lockholes sooner than Will Whitfoot! There wasn't no safety here, Mr. Frodo. Not while the Enemy was hunting the Ring and the Shadow growing all the while."
"And then Saruman came and made things worse," Frodo said.
"No," she said, her eyes distant. "No the worst was before -- wakin' up in the morning and feeling like there wasn't no point in fighting back against the changes anymore than you could hold back the rain by shouting rhymes at it. Waitin' for winter to end, and the sun so thin in the sky it couldn't hardly be said to be shinin' at all."
"I never knew the Shadow reached so far," Frodo said sadly.
"And why not? It's the same air here as anywhere else.”
”Sam knew,” Frodo confessed. “He saw what might happen to the Shire in Galadriel’s mirror; the Gaffer being turned out and all. But we had still a long way to go to Mordor, and he chose to come home with me or not at all.” Frodo put his maimed hand against the windowpane, letting the sun shine on the scar as it shone on the scars on the Hill. “I’d hoped we’d prevented his vision from coming true.”
”That’s it,” Rosie said, as if she’d been given a key to a lock. “That’s why he’s doing it. Don’t you see, Mr. Frodo, he blames himself. That’s why he won’t take any help.” Her eyes were bright with excitement. “Oh that’s got to be it. You’ve got to talk to him, tell him it’s all right. He’ll listen to you.”
”But… I don’t understand.” Frodo said.
”Please,” Rosie begged. “Please talk to him. Or one of these times he’ll go off and when he gets too near the borders the wind will take him off and we’ll never see him again.”
Frodo wasn’t sure about that, but she was worried, and he wanted to talk to Sam in any case, so he smiled at her and patted her shoulder. “We can’t let that happen. I’ll go this morning if you like, but you’ll have to let me get dressed first.”
She kissed him on the cheek, the way she kissed her brothers when they brought her ribbons from the village. “I’ll have your breakfast ready!” she promised, dancing to the door. “Oh, thank you!”
When Frodo reached the row of new smials that had been built at the back of the leveled sandpit he found the Gaffer out in the morning light, mixing mulch and dirt to go into the raised beds that Sam had had built to make it easier for him to reach them. The old hobbit touched his hat when he noticed Frodo. “Good morning, Mr. Frodo,” he said.
“Good morning, Master Gamgee,” Frodo answered.
“If you’re looking for that pony, you’ll have to go along to the blacksmith, for he’s thrown a shoe. But if you’re looking for Sam, inside,” waving a welcome to Frodo to enter his new home.
“Thank you,” Frodo said, and went on in.
He found Sam slumped in the Gaffer’s chair, his breakfast plate forgotten on the floor beside him. He turned his head a little as Frodo came in out of the bright morning light.
“Well it's gone.”
Frodo thought Sam was talking about the Ring until he saw that Sam was turning Galadriel's box in his hands. "There was a wee bit left, but I couldn’t do no more, and I didn’t know as it would stay good past this Spring, so I stopped at the Three Farthing Stone on the way and gave it to the wind." He handed the box to Frodo. "I hope that was the right thing to do."
"I'm sure it was, Sam," Frodo said, opening the small box in his hands. A single grain of dust clung to the bottom, so tiny that only the glow of its magic gave it away. How many trees had Sam planted in these few months? Hundreds at least, perhaps thousands. So many grains of dust would fit into even this small a box, and he'd watched Sam planting the chestnuts along the Bywater road, using tweezers to place a single speck of Galadriel's gift with each of the new trees. There must hardly be a village in the Shire that hadn't seen Sam come through since fall.
Small wonder he was tired.
Frodo touched Sam's shoulder and for a long moment he saw his friend and servant with the strange new vision that the Ring had bequeathed him -- not as a hobbit, but as a tree that has been roughly uprooted and washed downstream until it comes to a muddy place and tries to take root again.
The vision passed, and as his eyes adjusted to the dimness of the smial he realized that Sam was pale and drawn, and almost as thin as he’d been last March. Rosie was right. A puff of wind would put him on the road again.
Frodo let the bittersweet temptation linger for a moment. How marvelous to leave the troubles of the Shire behind. How soothing to walk in the wilderness again with Sam beside him and Lothlorien ahead, and no burden to trouble either of them as they sat and shared a bit of supper.
“Sam, you addlepate, have you let your breakfast go cold?” the Gaffer stood in the doorway, peering at the half-filled plate by his son’s feet. “There’s no call to go wastin’ vittles.”
“You can have it, Dad,” Sam said, with the careful clarity that they’d learned worked best in the face of his father’s deafness. “I had a good breakfast before I started out this morning.” He started to lever up, but Frodo stopped him, and shook his head as he bent to retrieve the plate.
“Not this time,” he said. “It’s all right, Master Gamgee. I’ll see to Sam.”
“Well and good, Mr. Frodo,” said the old hobbit, unoffended. “He might listen to you when he don’t listen to sense.” He picked up a trowel that he’d left on a shelf by the door and went outside again.
Frodo put the spoon into Sam’s hand and the plate onto his lap.
“You need to eat, Sam,” he ordered. “At least a few bites more. And then you need some proper sleep. You’ve worn yourself out with all this traveling.”
Sam almost smiled for a moment, and he dutifully ate a bite of the porridge, but then he put the spoon carefully down. “Maybe after I’ve slept some,” he said.
Frodo thought of all the breakfasts he’d barely touched and forbore from chiding Sam. “If you’re sure, Sam.”
“I am.” Sam pushed himself out of the chair, and stumbled towards the bedroom. Frodo followed him and helped him get out of the heavy mail shirt. Sam was too tired to make more than a token protest, and Frodo waved it aside.
“I don’t mind, Sam. You can’t sleep in all that.”
“I did on the road,” Sam said, rocking gently where he stood. “It don’t matter.”
Frodo realized that there were tears running down Sam’s face, and steered his exhausted friend into the bed. “What is it, Sam?” he asked.
“It’s Gollum,” Sam said, turning his head on the pillow as if he were ashamed to have said as much.
Gollum? Frodo sat very still as the memories of Smeagol danced in front of his eyes. “What about him?” he asked, when he could speak again.
“A year ago today he fell, Mr. Frodo, and ain’t nobody grieved for him yet.” Sam shivered under Frodo’s hand, like the Mountain had shaken with hidden torments.
“And aren’t you grieving for him now, Sam?” Frodo said, pulling the blanket up to Sam’s shoulders. “He’s not forgotten, Sam. I promise.”
“But he’s gone,” Sam wailed. “And he didn’t have to be, or Gandalf wouldn’t’ve come to the mountain with three eagles and not just two. And it’s my fault. I never thought about how hard words hurt.” For a moment his eyes went to the window, where the Gaffer could be seen puttering among the flowerbeds. “I wonder sometimes… he was so quietlike there on the stairs… If I’d not called him a sneak…” Sam curled into a tight, miserable ball, trying to hide his sobs, and all that Frodo could do was stay and rub his shoulders, and wait for the storm to pass. It didn’t take long. Sam was too weary. In time he uncurled, wrung out but for a last few shudders, and waited for Frodo’s judgment.
“I hurt him first and worst at the pool by Henneth Annun,” Frodo told Sam, admitting it aloud for the sake of lost Smeagol. “He might still have come to me if I’d told him the truth, but I never gave him the chance.” He used his handkerchief on Sam. His own tears burned hot inside, but he wouldn’t… couldn’t cry.
“You meant no harm,” Sam said, patting Frodo’s hand weakly, as if he could see Frodo’s distress in spite of eyes that would barely stay open. “And you’d been woke out of a sound sleep, and the first good bed you’d seen in a long time.”
“Just as you’d been wakened on the Stairs,” Frodo reminded him. “There’s no good in wondering about might have beens, Sam. We did our best.”
“I’ll believe it if you will,” Sam murmured, melting into the pillow.
Frodo waited, but Sam didn’t speak again, and his breathing softened. “It wasn’t your fault,” he whispered, when he was sure that Sam was sleeping. “None of it was.”
It wasn’t until he got outside, all the way to the stone wall that marked the edge of the old hillside and the new garden that he was able to cry. The dreams made sense now, horrible sense, and he could deny them no longer. So he sat in the winter grass and leaned on the cool stones of the wall and wept, not knowing if he wept for Smeagol, or Sam, or for himself. And after a time, Rosie found him there, and gathered him into her arms and let him cry on her shoulder without saying a word.
