A Ghost In The Night
Chapter 24: Roses
Disclaimer: all characters are property of J.R.R Tolkien and Tolkien enterprises. I make no money from this Fan fiction.
Author's note: This is not a slash story, though I suppose you could read that into it if you had a mind to. I have nothing against slash stories at all, but I did not intend this to be read as a slash, so I'm sorry if you got that impression.
: Many thanks to DearAbbie for her wonderful suggestions, even if in the end it was too late to use them; Melodysongsinger for cheering me up after several horrible days at work; and the Frodohealers group for providing hours of enjoyable reading. You are all wondeeeeful people and I love you to bits! Pointless information, but this is the longest story I have ever written so I'm sorry if I have bored you with the length. Chapter 25 is DEFINITELY the last chapter, because I won't let it go any further than it all ready has, plus I've written it so I kinda know : )
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Rarely had Eleanor Gamgee been proved wrong, for her age dictated she held the most wisdom out of her less experienced and naïve siblings. However, Frodo had outwitted her, his words more freezing than the soft snowflakes that drifted lazily to the ground outside. The door to her usual store of retorts had been locked by his simple opinion, and she was left to force nonsensical words that refused to find body out of her mouth. Verbal communication shattered, she resorted to physical, dipping down and grabbing a cushion from the floor. Only her father seemed to read her correctly, for Merry and Rose were playing patter-cake, their hands gently slapping against each other in their frivolous game. Without a second thought, she jerked back her arm, and swung it at her brother. It hit him square on the head, and he toppled over onto his side, a small exclamation being issued before he fell. Eleanor laughed at him, but her laughter was cut short when she saw Merry break away from his game and adopt the new one she had introduced, throwing a cushion at her in retaliation. She glowered at him good humouredly, but just as she went to search for more ammo, Frodo emerged, red faced and lightly angry with his own cushion gripped within his hand, and before Eleanor could react, the cushion had found its way into her face, knocking her back several paces and into her father's rocking chair.
They all reacted as one, reaching down and grabbing one of the many cushions upon the floor and throwing them with a terrific strength at their siblings. Giggling, they jumped from their seat and darted to and fro to recollect the cushion from where it had skidded to halt on the opposite side of the room. Soon, the room was filled with a mighty whirlwind of poorly aimed cushions and the rain of laughter as the children fell into a blissful state of play. Merry and Rose had teamed up, throwing almost anything that wouldn't break at anything they liked. Eleanor had run from her father's chair after he had gifted her a pillow he had been lying on to continue the fray, racing forward and pummeling Frodo with the feathery fabric. Frodo fought back as best as he could with a rich purple cushion that looked black within the weak firelight, and soon they were locked in a variety of jars and parries, laughing as they landed each comfortable blow, occasionally being hit by a random cushion that Merry or Rose had thrown just to be included.
The mother sighed wearily, shaking her head at the mess she would have to be expected to clean. All ready had the cushions gone awry, landing dangerously close to some valuable ornament that she would like spared. Her husband was not helping, of course; it seemed he found the situation quite amusing, their innocent playing bringing a melancholy happiness to him. It was only when Merry's cushion missed and landed far too close to the fire that she called to them, breaking up the incident before the entire smial caught fire. The children broke apart harmlessly; Merry and Rose gathering the falling cushions for a comfortable seat upon the floor, Frodo and Eleanor with a last whack at each other. It took several moments before the laughter died down, and they were once again seated, tea cups in hand.
"I'm still right." Eleanor argued, glancing superiorly at her brother, her arms crossed.
"Are not!" He denied, playfully pushing her shoulder.
"Am too!"
"Are not!"
"Children!" the mother cried, disapprovingly glaring at her husband who was chuckling and encouraging their behavior. "Agree to disagree and leave us in peace! Your father did everything he could to help Mr Frodo. It wasn't his fault that he left."
"Dearest," the father intervened, his face masked in shadow still. "Perhaps young Frodo-lad has a point." The father turned his head, allowing the fire to light his face in the rippling glow. "They do seem to think alike, don't they? My," the father continued, and his tone was tenderly warm, "they even look alike, to a degree."
"Aye," the mother agreed, staring at the two children who sat, backs to each other, noses raised haughtily, and their arms crossed in stubborn ignorance. "They are both far too pale!"
Frodo smiled warmly at the statement, seeing the comparison as a great compliment, but then he remembered that he was silently warring with his sister, and he resumed what he thought to be a battle stance.
"Frodo is the one who failed," Eleanor argued, turning her head and sticking her tongue out at her younger brother.
"Eleanor!" the mother cried, mouth hung open in disbelief, for amidst Eleanor's attempts to appease her father she had said the worst possible thing. Only she seemed to understand the complexity of the situation: Merry and Rose only looked from their mother to their father, obviously unable to follow the problem.
"Now, dear," the father eased, beginning to rock back and forth once more. The mother silenced. "Frodo-lad has a point," the father confessed around a huge yawn. "He left because of us," the father paused, "because of me…" He sat up in his chair, the children's and his wife's eyes glued to his every movement. "The darkness got the better of him in the end."
He reached forward and gently gripped Eleanor's hand. She complied eagerly, and soon she was sat upon his lap, cradled as if she were a new born child within his grasp.
"He didn't fail, Eleanor," he said, kissing her on the head. "I know that now."
~~~~~~~~~
The west is where I belong
But I can not let it show.
Listen to my parting song,
Accept my farewell rose.
Frodo's eyes shot open, but other than that lightning fast reflex there was no other outward sign that he had woken from his slumber. Yes, his heart was practically bursting through his chest, and tears were clinging to his ivory cheeks, but his body had not moved in its position, thus not alerting the sure to be present Sam.
At first the last pictures of the dream The Spectre's grains had induced were prominent in his mind, protecting him from the full bodied rays of sunlight that hit his pillow and struck the wide and frightened eye's with a normally painful force. But after a few moments small pieces of reality claimed his attention: the sweet smell of athelas that hung faintly in the still, unmoving air in his bedroom; the dust that had frozen as if scared in the sunlight, giving body to the generously given rays; the faint tickling of the woolen fabric that had been pushed deliberately underneath his neck to cushion it from the normally harsh feather stems of his pillow; the slight tug of gravity upon the mattress as it compensated for another's weight; and the faint but unmistakable sound of mumbled conversation.
"It's apple."
Frodo closed his eyes, half to cloak them from the sunlight that lit everything with a painful explosion of colour, half to convince any one who may be watching that he was asleep. He was not embarrassed, but he felt that this was a conversation he was not meant to be privy to.
"I thought you might like it."
Frodo swallowed, trying vainly to make himself appear unconscious, mind swirling with the distorted images of the dream he had just fled. Even now, when he was able to look back without fear and panic clouding his judgment, he could still not solve the riddle of The Spectre's, and, from the dream, he was running out of time to decode the senseless information.
"Did you bake that just for me?"
Frodo silently winced, for the sound of Sam's voice reminded him of the despairing cries of the dream. For a moment he saw himself back there, Sam's hurt and accusing glare like magma coursing through his veins, the panicked words of The Spectre as it tried to show him the answer to it all, and the hideous laughing of the broken tree as it toyed with their lives below its killing branches. He braced himself, right hand gripping the mattress with a strong intensity, fighting off the images with others of his beloved uncle and the faces of his companions.
The bed raised upwards as an unknown weight was removed, and Frodo's neck was suddenly jarred as the mattress rose. The pain of the wound was reborn again and he groaned weakly, the small noise a pathetic defiance against the boiling poison that centered in that one agonizing spot, the soft fabric underneath his neck now like tiny thorns that pricked and bled him. Then, just as suddenly, the weight upon the bed was back, and his neck was jostled again, forcing it into the spear-like fabric. He bit back his cry with an almighty effort, focusing instead on the sound of The Spectre's reassurances that it whispered during his time with it, but inevitably his impending failure with Sam's fate barged its way into his foremost thoughts, silencing any reassurances that would otherwise give him strength.
"The flowers, Frodo. What were the flowers that he was trying to protect?"
He didn't know, nor could he find any way to identify them. Even if he did realize what the flowers were, he could not see how this was going to help him save Sam. What importance could a bunch of flowers hold to Sam's fate? What was it about them that was so significant? Frodo could not see a connection, and he feared even if he did that he still would not know what to do.
"Lad! What are the flowers?! Just say their name! Say it!"
Frodo mentally shook himself. He was afraid, and he knew it. Perhaps the most fearful part of the dream had not been his impending failure, but his acceptance that the saving of Sam's life held no importance to him. That thought which had purged its way into his mind had left him feeling more nauseous than shelob's poison; his apparent apathy that this man was going to die and that it didn't bother him, made him feel sick all over. He didn't know it was Sam in the dream, but to Frodo that was no excuse. He felt he may as well have written Sam's epitaph.
"Thank you," Sam said politely, his words pained and bleeding. If Frodo allowed it, he even fancied that Sam was bitterly thanking him for the fate he had thrust upon him underneath the falling giant of wood. "That's very kind of you. You needn't have gone to all that trouble."
"I thought…"
Frodo started, for until now he had not given the second voice much consideration. It was a female, that was certain, and he could not help but dig himself further underneath the covers to hide himself in a sudden blemish of embarrassment. With his eyes closed and his mind a riot of guilt echoing phrases, he could not identify the voice of the person who spoke, and if he tried to look, he knew they would be alerted to his state of consciousness.
"I thought maybe we would go and eat it outside."
She paused, but Frodo heard a thousand things in her silence.
"Together."
"If you do not figure out how to let Sam go, it will be too late!"
"What are the flowers?!"
"Got to save the flowers, got to save the flowers…"
Frodo held his breath, the dizzying torrent of images and conflicting words throwing him into a rocking world of mislabeled sign posts and topsy turvy paths that featured no end. In his heart he yearned to reach out for Sam, to be comforted by his friend's gentle embrace that so often scared away the darkness.
"I would love to go."
Frodo winced at that, and he made a desperate call to Sam within his head, a silent plea that he tried not to allow himself to show.
"But I can't."
The silence that followed was all consuming, swallowing words, heart and emotion all in one. Frodo dug his head into the pillow, jaw clenched as he tried not to appear awake. The declaration that Sam would not leave him had comforted him in his time of need, but Sam's tone, broken and torn, made him think twice about the gardener's decision.
"You can't?"
"It's Mr Frodo," Sam said. "He's ill."
"Oh."
Just one word, yet it held more pain than a lifetime's worth of torture, more despair than an ocean of bitterly wept tears. In his head, Frodo heard the threatening groan of the branches as they began to splinter, the despairing cry of the gardener as he dug furiously at their base. The warning did not cease, and Frodo felt as if he was trapped within the audio world of the dream, forced to listen to the phrases over and over again until it became too late. His heart constricted in his chest. A despairing fear rose for no clear purpose. The mental picture of Sam's face melted into that of a skeleton before his closed eyelids.
"If you do not figure out how to let Sam go, it will be too late!"
"it will be too late!"
"TOO LATE!"
An influx of memories bombarded him: Sam, standing underneath that blackened tree, his hands bleeding as he dug; The Spectre, its mystical blue light falling feather-light onto the surrounding trees, its face disappointed and pained; Merry and Pippin, clinging onto each other as they wept upon the kitchen floor; the ring, as it fell into the bowels of Mount Doom; Gollum; the eye of Sauron, burning the sky as it searched for him…
Frodo felt his heart give a painful and powerful thud in his chest. He opened his eyes, the tears smearing everything into dripping columns of yellow and brown, not caring if he was noticed. He didn't know what to do. He couldn't save Sam; he had failed after everything, falling at the last hurdle…
"Perhaps another time?"
There was that one puzzle still left to solve, but amongst the racing images of his nightmare quest he could not begin to concentrate. He squeezed the mattress with helpless frustration, eyes pinned upon where he fancied the Grey Havens lay as if hoping for some sign of support.
"Yes, another time."
No sign came. His heart pounded painfully again, and in his head the muscle contraction was as loud as one of Gandalf's fireworks.
"I-I'll just leave this pie in the kitchen."
"Got to save the flowers, got to save the flowers…"
"I'm sorry to have troubled you."
"If you do not figure out how to let Sam go, it will be too late!"
"What are the flowers?!"
There was the sound of departing footsteps that he heard dimly amongst the screaming voices. His heart was pounding with pure fear, his mind drowning in helpless anger, his body saturated with incurable disease. Everything rose to a climax, and Frodo, unable to take it, fell back into unconsciousness.
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He was back with a jolt that sent him to his knees in the dream, knocking all senses away from him with a single touch. Ahead of him, the threads of The Spectre had gathered to prevent the trees descent, their collective strength preventing the wood from killing the stubborn gardener who refused to leave his wilting crop.
"Frodo! Say their name!"The Spectre cried desperately, the strands being pummeled towards the earth. "Say it!"
But the gardener's body cloaked them from his view.
"He hides it from you, child! He can not save the flowers! Only you can! Hurry! The tree falls!"
And suddenly the strands of light had thrown the gardener away from the flowers. Frodo raced forward, grabbing at the black heads of the flowers, willing them to make sense. To his surprise the flowers broke free of their prison with little effort, and he was left to wonder why the gardener had failed to free them when he had done it so easily.
But he did not have long to ponder.
With the Spectre's disappearance, the tree was falling, and Frodo leapt away, a handful of the flowers clutched tightly in his hand. Just in time Frodo escaped, and the tree fell with a thud that shook the very foundations of the earth. Beside him, the gardener wept bitterly upon the floor, his hands smearing blood all over his gaunt face.
"The flowers!"
Frodo juggled them in my hands, turning them over repeatedly as he searched for a sign of what they were.
"Save them save them save them…oh please…"
"I'm the one who should be sorry," Frodo heard Sam say, his voice carrying on the wind. The plants within Frodo's hand suddenly began changing: snippets of green light were running up the stems, dashes of red erupted and faded on the petals. Frodo stared at them, his mouth agape, the flowers forming something he recognized, something he understood. The flowers formed their red petals, the green stayed within the stems, and the thorns shrunk. For a brief flash, Frodo saw the form the flowers would hold back home in the Shire, as healthy and as beautiful as their cousins that grew in his own garden.
"My dear sweet…"
"Rose." They said together, their voices in perfect unison.
And then Sam's voice silenced, and Frodo was left breathing deeply, the flowers within his hands releasing glittering white stars that raised towards the sky, dying after the floated above Frodo's head.
"Rose Cotton," Frodo mumbled, a wave of realization drowning his senses.
But the strands of light that orbited the flowers did not seem satisfied, and when Frodo woke himself from his shock, he understood why. The vibrant colour had dulled now, the shocking reds and shouting greens seeping from the petals, stems and leaves, splattering like paint against the grey earth.
"They're dying," Frodo said, watching in petrified horror as a green droplet splashed against the ground and was absorbed into the darkness. The only answer he got from the circling threads of singing light was a shimmering display of the spectrum. "It is too late…"
"NO!" cried the gardener, locking his hands over his ears as if by doing so he could delete the last few moments from history. "They can't be dead! I never said! Not once! They have to live!"
The gardener ran forward and stole the flowers from Frodo with a crisp swipe, burying them into his chest where they crumbled and decayed, their colour staining the small fabric left upon his body. "Come on, sweet heart," he murmured, one hand lightly stroking the crumbling leaves. "Come on!" he coaxed to the departed.
Frodo could do nothing but watch, his heart going out to the figure that held the flowers within trembling arms.
"Frodo," the light whispered, sweeping in front of his face and blocking his view of the gardener. "You have saved the plants from the tree, but yet they will not survive much longer."
The gardener's cries interrupted the tuneful flow from The Spectre, but it did not heed him, and it shivered, its pure light paling the gardener's face.
"The flowers Frodo," it continued. "You now know what they represent?"
Frodo nodded. The gardener continued to pace, the flowers wilting ever more within his grasp. He continued to mumble erratically "I never told her..couldn't hide it…had to hide…"
"It is not over, my boy. You see how he fawns over the flowers?" The Spectre separated, allowing Frodo to see the gardener within a frame of moving light, before shrinking again, concealing him from view.
"Yes," Frodo answered.
"You must become the gardener, lad. You must be the one to save the flowers…"
"never told her….have to hide it…can't let them know…"
"…for he can not do it. Frodo, did you notice how he could not free the flowers when you did so easily? Do you know what that means?"
"That I…" Frodo began, forcing his tongue to work. "I must be the one to do it?"
He raised a hand to his heart, a hand where a ghostly finger wavered in and out of reality; one moment pressing the fabric of his shirt, the next gone, vanishing into nothing. "But how…Rose Cotton…how can I do what he can not?"
"That, Frodo, is up to you."
"had to hide…too late…too late…"
He knew what he had to do, the way he knew that he couldn't stay in the Shire as he had so often wished, the way he knew that day in Rivendell that his life had been cursed, never to be saved by any magic or friend. Yes, he knew what he had to do now, but doing it would be a bitter-sweet torture: sweet for he knew Sam would be happy with what he would do, bitter because that selfish part of him wanted Sam as the friend he had always been rather than the distant memory he was sure to become.
But as Frodo raised his gaze, watching the gardener dance in erratic circles with the lifeless flowers, anguished cries burning his memory, he knew that he could not permit this self induced torture upon him any longer.
"I have to let him go," he whispered bitterly.
"Yes, child," The Spectre confirmed, each word sending sparks of purest white to fall like stars to the ground. It wavered, indicating the direction where the gardener rocked back and forth with the flowers, his body wrenched in tortuous pain. "You do not have to do it if you don't want to," The Spectre paused, deliberately allowing Frodo to hear the sobs of denial and desperate pleas from the gardener. "I can not make you do it. It must be your decision."
Frodo withdrew his hand from his chest, staring absently at the ghostly finger that faded and reappeared with every beat of his heart. Away from him, the gardener had collapsed into a pitiful heap, his sobs muffled by the knees he had drawn to his head; the flowers drooped out of his hands, black as tar, lifeless and limp.
"Do you know what you are asking me?" Frodo queried, inside drowning with emotion at each pitiful plea, at each tiny word that escaped the gardener's lips. He felt as if a cold, icy hand had seized his heart within its grasp, and was beginning to squeeze it.
"I am asking you nothing, child." The light dimmed, the strands failing against the hungry darkness. "It is Sam that is asking you to do this."
"But he never said a word," Frodo said. His hand dropped to the floor with an echoing thud. "Not once."
"He hid it from you child. Can't you see? You hide your pain from him, he hides it from you. Sometimes you have to know what to see."
"Are you saying I was blind?" Frodo queried, the echoing sobs of the gardener like burning rain drops against the grain of his morals.
"You were not blinded, my lad." The Spectre reassured, floating away towards the destroyed prison of the flowers and back again. "You were fooled."
The gardener continued to sob, the pressure upon Frodo's heart began to build, but he could not cry.
"So, I'm just supposed to let him go?" Frodo asked, his words hollow. "I-I'm just supposed to walk right out of the door, and never see him again?" The gardener-no, Sam, Frodo corrected himself-fell completely onto his side, the flowers dead. "I'm supposed to leave the one thing which kept me alive!?"
The Spectre said nothing. Frodo stood on legs made of jelly, hand partially raised towards Sam.
"Frodo…"
"You're asking me to sacrifice what kept me breathing," he said, grimacing as he waved a hand in bitter but fruitless defiance at the strands of light, cutting them into shapeless halves that died upon the breeze. "You're asking me to lose the only thing which makes me happy. You're asking me to stick a knife in my heart and twist it."
Frodo turned to Sam where he lay, hands wrapped around the circle of flowers that had wound themselves around the fingers, eyes distant as he searched for a cure to the disease of darkness that had polluted him. In that moment, Frodo could feel the bond between them: the pain that coursed through their bodies and the tears that fell down his disbelieving face mirrored Frodo's own actions with a scolding mockery. Their eyes locked, and Frodo could suddenly see Sam for the pitiful thing he had made him, the silent accusations that had never been voiced screaming from the heat of his glare. Sam shivered upon the ground, his body wrenched as he gasped for painful air.
And Frodo knew that he had to let go.
Never had Frodo felt such a distance in his life, like a giant wedge had been placed between him and the life he once had. That was the last time Frodo saw him, lying helpless upon the floor of some baron wastelands, flowers locked in hands clasped in prayer to a god that could never answer.
But Frodo could.
"Goodbye Sam," Frodo whispered, the world freezing around them, as if watching and listening, the memory being stored in a frame immune to time. "I'm letting you go."
The small bundle that Sam had fallen into was not enough to conceal him from Frodo, and he walked, his legs now feeling like heavy, dead weights, towards the shivering mass of his best friend. Sam curled into a ball at his approach, the flowers within his grasp falling into broken pieces. Frodo knelt down beside him, paused, then reached forward with his mutilated hand. With but the barest gesture, he lightly touched Sam's cheek, putting all the joy, love and affection that he knew Sam deserved, saying a thousand lifetimes of emotion with a simple touch.
"Goodbye, my dear Samwise," he murmured. "And thank you."
Infinity was not long enough for Frodo to say what he wanted to say, words fell far short of the storm of emotions in his heart as his fingertips fell upon the callused skin, but it was all Frodo could do along with contenting himself as the gardener raised his head, tears dripping from his eyes, the roses broken upon the floor melting back into each other and reforming the flowers they truly were. They both gazed at them, the rippling light that was born like the flame of a phoenix washing colour over their faces. Frodo smiled wistfully, seeing the creation of hope within those tiny leaves, and Sam…
Sam smiled.
"Goodbye."
At the end of those words, Sam was gone, and Frodo's hand was left hovering in the air, touching, feeling, nothing but void space. It was over, like the setting of the sun after an arduous day, it was over for Frodo. But that last touch of his friend lingered upon his fingertips for many years, and whenever Frodo felt lonely or sad that he had left his friends, that simple tingle was enough to remind him of home.
TBC
Okay, Boromir on a penny farthing is being challenged by Gandalf on cloud nine after far too much pipe weed for the ending to this fic. Oh, what the hell! The fellowship could put on a Christmas play! Gandalf could be a sheep. You have been warned. Again, next bit should be up either tomorrow or the next day. I first need to check with Nicole Sabatti to see if she has any suggestions, i.e, burn it.
P.S You are wonderful people for putting up with this story for so long. Me love you all!!