Chapter 2

Sam watched the awesome display of flying fiery rocks and ash and thick black smoke when he realized that Frodo was still kneeling at the chasm's edge.

"Drat him," Sam muttered resignedly. "I don't know how he gets along without me. I'm coming, Frodo, don't you worry!" he finished off, yelling, and began careening up the slope. If Frodo had heard him, he would have been worrying. The last thing any hobbit needs on the brink of disaster is a kender nearby.

A fireball just missed incinerating Sam as he bounded upwards. Oblivious to the fate he had barely avoided, the kender continued on to Frodo, unconsciously dodging flying debris, rocks, and more fireballs.

At last the loyal kender reached his friend. "Isn't this so cool?" Sam marvelled excitedly. "I don't think even Uncle Trapspringer's ever seen anything like this! Wait'll I tell all the other kenders!"

"Other kenders?" Frodo asked, considerably alarmed. "Th-there's no other kenders anywhere around here, is there?" Which showed that he was back to normal, Sam realized, because if he'd said that even an hour ago he would have gotten the response, "That's nice, Sam." (Which showed just how corruptive the influence of the Ring really was.)

"No. And - Oh, no," Sam said, rather disappointedly. "I forgot. We're right at the edge of an exploding volcano, and there's a bunch of lava maybe twenty feet to your right, and I really doubt that you can beat it down the mountain in your state, if you're anything like you were two minutes ago. I practically had to drag you up -"

"Sam, please, if you don't shut up we don't have any chance of beating anything down the mountain." Frodo groaned, and put his head in his hands. That was when Sam noticed that one of Frodo's fingers was missing.

"Uh, Frodo? Were you aware that one of your fingers is gone? It looks like it was bitten off! That's weird! Did it hurt?-"

"Sam, for the Valar's sake SHUT UP!"

"Ok, ok, I'll shut up. Hey, Frodo?" Sam asked, suddenly realizing something that made him feel sort of queasy. "The whole point of this Quest was to destroy the Ring, right? Well, I have something that you should probably know -"

"Sam, when I tell you to shut up, YOU SHUT UP!"

"Yeesh," Sam muttered. "He's feeling better, all right."

Frodo sighed, and apologetically put an arm around Sam's shoulders. "Come on, let's get out of here. Sorry I yelled."

Together, the two companions toiled back down the way they had come. They lurched to a stop when Frodo collapsed, in the middle of a small knoll that would soon become a veritable island in the sea of magma. "Enough, Sam," he gasped. "I can't go farther. We might as well die here as anywhere else."

"Oh, come now, we're not going to die," Sam scoffed. "Why, I bet the eruption stops not twenty minutes from now. You're always saying we're going to die."

"I do not!"

"Yes you do. What about in Moria, with the Orcs and troll and Bal - thingymabobber swarming all around? And when we were on the river and I found you taking off on your own? And what about in the pass of Cirith Ungol? What about -"

"This time we are going to die!" Frodo said in a rage. "If I have to toss you into the lava myself!"

"But then only I would die, not you -"

"Sam...." Frodo said warningly through clenched teeth. Finally Sam realized that he was treading on thin ice, and he quieted down for a moment.

Fumes were reaching them from the crater by this time. Frodo and Sam started coughing and gagging, Sam doing so very enthusiastically.

"Say, this is neat! I've never breathed gross gassy stuff like this before. D'you think it's poisonous? Do you think we'll die from it? That would be -"

"Sam, for pity's sake be quiet! This is not a kender picnic!"

"Oh, I know that," Sam replied cheerfully. "Did you know you're turning a really interesting green colour, Frodo?"

Frodo didn't answer, and Sam began to see why. His vision was beginning to cloud, and his brain was fogging over. Sam very firmly told his legs, which had suddenly turned to rubber and didn't seem to want to hold him up, to stay straight. He forced his eyelids to keep open (they had apparently taken on a mind of their own and were insisting on closing), as he didn't want to miss seeing everything about being killed by a volcano.

Thus, Sam was the only one to see the funny little winged black shapes flying out of the north, and the only one to realize that they were eagles as they got nearer. He was also the only one to be awake when the eagles (there were three) scooped the hobbit and the kender up.

Drowsily, he tried to fight back unconsciousness to see who had rescued them. But he couldn't keep his eyes open any longer, and he slipped into blissful blackness.

Fizban, for it was he who had summoned the eagles to rescue the two friends, heard Sam mutter thickly and triumphantly as the kender passed out, "See, I told you we weren't going to die, Frodo."

Sam woke to the cool quiet of a glade in - he had to force his dizzy head to remember it properly - Ithilien. He felt as though he had had a most exciting dream, with evil spiders and Orcs and exploding volcanoes and -

"So you are awake at last, Samwise Gamgee." A big, deep voice startled the kender. He looked to see who it was.

"Hey, don't I know you?" Sam scratched his head, puzzled.

"You do indeed."

"Who are you then?"

"I am - well - I am - FurrButt! No, Foozball, wasn't it? Or Flubber? Oh, I don't know."

"I know you! Fizban! Uncle Tas told me all about you!" Sam was intensely pleased. "Hey, you got rid of the brown! Good. I always thought that brown made your skin look sort of jaundiced, if you know what I mean. No offence or anything. You look much better in the white."

Fizban laughed. "Thank you, Sam. Uh, I don't suppose you've seen my hat anywhere, have you?"

"It's on your head," he explained. Sam sighed, stretched, and jumped out of the hammock that had been set up for him. "Where's Frodo?"

"He left to get something to eat."

"Oh, good. Maybe now he'll listen to my Important Announcement."

"What would that be?"

Sam didn't hear Fizban, as he had just spotted Frodo coming back with a mug of ale and some dried meat and bread in his hands. "Hey, Frodo?"

"What, Sam?" Frodo asked wearily. "It had better be good. I'm getting sick of your pointless questions."

"I have a rhetorical question for you: What would you do, um, if - if the Ring wasn't really destroyed?"

Dead silence ensued for a moment. Frodo turned white, then bright red. "What are you getting at?" His tone was more dangerous than any that Sam had heard before.

"I - I mean, if it only looked like the Ring? But wasn't?"

"Sam!" Frodo yelped. "You don't mean to say that you still have it!"

"It was only a rhetorical question -"

"Oh, sure. Tell the truth."

"Yes." Sam's voice was very small.

"Yes, what?"

"Yes, the Ring wasn't really destroyed. I - I accidentally g-gave you m-my other ring of invisibility -"

"SAMWISE GAMGEE! YOU DOORKNOB OF A DUNDERHEADED COCONUT AND BRAINLESS, GOOFY THIEF! I'M GOING TO MURDER YOU!!"

"Now, please be reasonable, Frodo," Sam gulped. "I didn't mean to -"

Frodo's hand went to his waist to draw Sting as he advanced on the hapless kender.

It wasn't there.

"SAM!" Frodo screamed.

The kender was off like a shot. "I thought you didn't want it anymore! You just dropped it! I was going to give it back, honeeeesst!" he yelled back over his shoulder.

Ranting like a maniac, Frodo gave chase.