Golden snowflakes.
Chapter five: calm and storm.
T: Endymion, *sigh*, yes, I agree that the last chapter was a little `hasty` and so I'm going to be re-writing it in the next week. This means that chapter six will be a little late, but it shouldn't be by much, probably a day at the most! As to Frodo and Sam having never met the Ents before, I also thought that was the case until I carefully re-read the end of ROTK, now it doesn't state categorically that they met but the fellowship tarried with the Ents for a rather long time and so the assumption is that they must have been introduced. However to keep the peace I may write two versions of my replacement chapter four, one with the Ents and F+S having never been introduced and one where they have. But I might not have the time to do this so we shall see.
I also felt that this would be a twenty chaptered story but I can only get as far as seven chapters without repeating the plot line and so I'm going to stop at seven. It's basically so that the story remains a fairly good one, dragging things out more than the plot will allow tends to make stories turn sour very quickly.
Warnings remain the same with a slight turning up of the ANGST in this chapter so beware. Also a decided lack of Merry and Pip in this chapter but they're coming back in the next with a vengeance!
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They road into Minas Tirith at the head of a crowd, three of the four Hobbits still baring the mark of the ill rest they had suffered upon the road. This was fading now, however, just as strong bruises tend to fade.
Aragorn greeted them in a manner befitting each, bowing to the ex-Ring barer, saluting Merry and Pippin and shaking Sam by the hand. Once the crowd had dissipated it was to the stout Hobbit that the King had spoken first.
"I am glad to see you Sam, for Arwen has asked often of late to see blooms in the gardens that I do not know how to tend or plant."
"Think nothing of it, mister Strider. All I ask is that one of ye men shows me the way to the gardens and I'll be content to do as I can."
"We can do better than that, Samwise." Came the melodious voice of the Lady Arwen herself. She was stood a little behind her husband and had, until she had spoken, been hidden in shadow. Now in the soft light of early morning her beauty seemed to shine from her face, the rise in her abdomen speaking a little of the reason for this healthy glow.
"If your friends are willing to spare you, Samwise, I would take you to the gardens myself and tell you what I would dearly love to see within them." The Lady said.
"I do not believe that we could keep him here, even if we wished to, Lady. For he now has the gracious offer of your company to tempt him away." Pippin remarked. Arwen smiled at the compliment and gesturing for Sam to follow her, headed away from the company.
"As to you young Master Took, Master Brandybuck, what do you intend to do on this fine day?" Aragorn enquired after a moment.
"I thought that I might go to Emyn Arnen to visit Beregond."
"And I shall accompany him, Strider, for I dearly wish to see the Lady Éowyn again." Merry said.
"Then go now, before you run the risk of reaching Emyn Arnen after night fall. But mark this, I will not allow you to spend all of your time there with Faramir, for I have wish to talk to you again."
"We shall be back by tomorrow at the latest, Aragorn. Until then you make talk as much as you wish to Frodo and Sam, if you can tear him from the garden that is." Merry stated as he and Pippin re-mounted their horses. They were gone in a moment, their voices raised clear in farewell long after they were but dots upon the horizon.
"Shall we walk the gardens, Frodo?" Aragorn enquired once the silence had stretched before them enough to be uncomfortable.
"Yes. I believe I would like that, Strider, for it has been many weeks since I have smelt the sweetness of Summers fresh blooms."
*
"Much has happened since I saw you last, Strider."
"That I can tell by the light in your eyes, Frodo. Will you tell me of what has happened?" Aragorn enquired. Frodo paused mid-step and his eyes strayed out across the gardens where the bent crook of Sam's back was just visible upon the horizon.
"On the way here we stooped for a while in the Old Forest. Tom could see all that had befallen me since we had last met and he could see my yearning for the Ring also."
"It is a thing not easily forgotten, Frodo, though I had thought in time that you might."
"Yes. So did I at one point. Now though…"
"You do not have to tell me if you do not wish to, Frodo."
"Thank you. But I must talk of this to someone.
"Tom told me that the Sea could rid me of my yearning for the Ring and I know that to be the truth. However, I know also that crossing the Sea, travelling to Valinor, will bring about pain and perhaps even death to one or more of my friends.
"There is another cure also, but Tom would not talk of it with me. And so I feel trapped, for it seems to me that I will soon have no choice but to take the path to the Sea,"
"Of this other cure I have long known, Frodo, but I believe you must find it of your own volition or it shall lose its potency."
"Yet time is running short, Strider, I must cross with Bilbo or not cross at all. And remaining here while I crave the Ring… while I am half healed…it is not a thing I wish to do."
"I can only assure you that things will sort themselves out, Frodo. Until they do, however, let us talk together of something other than the Ring or the Sea. Tell me how the Shire fares."
"It is as if Saruman never came there, in fact things are better now for we are graced with the beauty of the Mallorn."
"Has it bloomed yet?"
"No, but it will, it has been tended by Sam after all. I believe he has magic in his hands, no matter what he himself believes." Frodo said. A silence flowed between the two of them and the soft lilt of Sam's voice, raised in a song.
Though Frodo barely recalled the time from which the song came, he felt an odd chill soaking through his bones as the first words washed around him.
"In western lands beneath the Sun" Those words recalled to him darkness and a time full of fear and doubt. As the song continued the back of Frodo's neck began to throb and he felt suddenly trapped.
"Aragorn?" He enquired, his breath laboured now, as if his chest was bound, thus restricting his breathing.
"Yes, Frodo?"
"Do you think we might talk inside now?" He enquired. Aragorn regarded him silently for a moment then replied.
"Of course, Frodo" And together the pair turned and headed into the building, their steps trailed by the soft lilt of Sam singing.
*
By late afternoon the soil surrounding him was awash with a rainbow's spread of colours. Arwen had left him not long after she had told him what she wished done in the garden but had returned a little after noon and was watching him now from a small stone bench a few inches from where he was working.
"Rest a moment, Samwise." She suggested as he paused to wipe the sweat from his brow. "For I would like your company, if only for a moment." He complied willingly, the joints of his back crackling slightly as he stood.
"Thank you, my Lady." He mumbled as he came to sit at her feet."
"You are weary, Samwise." She said after a moment. "And not just from tending my gardens. Something troubles you greatly, something that you may tell me if you think it shall help."
"I believe you know what I would tell you, my Lady."
"You worry still for Frodo?"
"Yes. You see, I've been dreaming of late that I did not find him in Cirith Ungol on that day and though it is but a dream I begin to believe that there is an element of truth to it.
"Because although I rescued something that day, it was not Frodo, not truly. For the spell of the Ring had already claimed what little there was of him and even once it was destroyed he didn't come back to me.
"For the Sea had already claimed him and your gift, beggin` your pardon Lady, has only increased his temptation for it."
"Then he yearned for the Sea even before I bestowed my gift to him?"
"Yes. The yearning for the Sea has ever been in his heart since I've known him and perhaps even before."
"This I truly did not know, Sam, for if I had I may not have bestowed to him the even star.
"For a yearning for the Sea is a thing not easily destroyed and many great men have perished at the hands of one who has fallen to its call. Yet what else could have been done? Your Master will find rest in Valinor that he shall not gain by staying here upon Middle Earth."
"And what of us left behind, Lady? For there shall be no following him on this occasion shall there?"
"Not at this point in time, no. But you at least might follow him in time, Sam, for you bore the Ring also, if only for a short amount of time."
"And what of Merry and Pippin? They too shall be broken by his leaving, more perhaps than even I, for they are his kin. Shall they be forced to remain here as first Frodo and then myself cross over into paradise without them?"
"I fear it must be as such, Sam, for what other alternative is there?"
"I'll find Frodo, my Lady. I'll find my Master and I'll pull him away from the song of the Sea and the Ring."
"I admire your determination, Samwise, but I fear that this time even your strength may not be enough to save Frodo." '
"Then I shall die trying, Lady." He replied. Arwen regarded him with a sad understanding for a moment and then said,
"Tell me about the Shire, Sam, about the life you have given it."
"`Twasn't me, my Lady, but the gift of your Grandmother that breathed life back into the Shire's soil. Everything is at its peak at the moment and I was loathed to leave it all. Especially the Mallorn, for it was to bloom soon, I could feel it in my stomach."
"That a Mallorn is growing that far to the East is further proof of your skill, Sam, for even with my Grandmother's gift, the Mallorn may not have grown at all."
"'Twasn't nothing, my Lady, just care and love. Rose believed I had a gift with me hands also, came close to making me believe it, but in my arrogance I let plants die and me Gaffer talked the sense back into me head after that."
"Who is this Rose you speak of, Sam? A lass you are courting perhaps?" Arwen enquired. Sam blushed scarlet and replied,
"No lady. She was but…"
"But?"
"Time away from her has made me see that I love her more as a sister than anything else."
"Then it was well that we asked you here."
"It was fate, Lady."
"Fate, Sam?"
"Yes Lady, for fate is something I have always believed strongly in."
"Then I hope that fate continues to be kind, Sam.
"How are young Master Took and Master Brandybuck?"
"As troublesome as always, Lady. Though they've both grown up a little of late and it shows in the way that they deal with certain things in their lives.
"Mr. Merry's developed a real head for problems and I often see him now answering questions people have posed him. He's also more grave and responsible and though it's a little sad to see his flippant nature laid to rest, I know that it's a good thing in the end.
"Mr. Pippin's not quite so foolhardy as he was, though some of his childishness is there and I'm glad of that fact. He's still the youngest of us after all.
"He and Merry are hardly apart now and I wonder sometimes if Mr. Pippin's not coming to rely too heavily on Mr. Merry."
"I doubt that that is the case, Sam. Both have lost things close to them in recent times and so it is only logical that they would wish to lose no more. Thus they hold hard onto one another, for fear of loosing their friendship."
"If that is true, Lady, then why is it that Mr. Frodo's losses are making him push his friends away rather than keep them close?"
"For that I have no answer, Sam. Or at least I have none that you would wish to hear."
*
She had left Sam not long after that and retired for a while to her bedroom so that she might gather together he thoughts.
She immerged again as the sun was heading slowly westwards, its light an orange fire upon the horizon. She walked with the grace befitting her kind, her dark eyes seeking out one that she knew would be close. Clenched tight within one hand was a small conch shell, its presence here part of an irrational hope that somehow it would help the one she sought.
Soon she found him, his small form stood beneath the White Tree his eyes staring hard at some middle distance that only he could perceive.
"Frodo?" She enquired. The sound of his name turned his head to her but for a moment his eyes were still focused on that unperceivable middle distance. It was only a moment, however, and the glazed look left his eyes so fast that she almost believed that she had imagined it.
"What can I do for you, Lady?"
"I wished to bestow to you this." She said as she passed him the shell. "My father gave it to me the last we met and he told me that should my heart ever yearn for the Sea I could lift this shell to my ear an hear it's song. I thought that it might be of some help to you." Frodo lifted the shell to his ear for a moment and a shadow lifted from him that she had not been able to perceive until the moment it left him.
"It is beautiful." He replied eventually as he lowered the shell to his side again.
"I thought also that we might talk a little of the choice I made available to you the last we met."
"I do not believe there is anything to discuss, Lady." He replied as he tucked the shell into his belt. Arwen had to admire the diplomacy of that reply for it was neither an answer nor was it a complete refusal to answer at all.
"I did not wish to push you towards crossing the Sea, Frodo, by giving you the option. I wished to give you a choice of ways to go forward from where you had come to rest."
"That I knew already, Lady. Yet the fact that the option of crossing over into Valinor is only one of a spectrum of choices does not change the fact that it is the only one that I can take."
"You know that is not the truth, Frodo. For I see through your eyes that you know of another option that you might take, that you know it but fear it also." She said. She watched with interest as Frodo's eyes dropped from hers and his mind turned inwards so that he might search himself to see if he did indeed hold the knowledge that she claimed he did. Arwen knew that he would find nothing, that this knowledge was hidden beneath a vast sediment of lies that had been told to himself so that he might create a false reality in which he could live. To make him doubt the truth of that reality though, to make him question himself, might be enough to begin to dislodge the sediment so that he might find the truth and begin to heal completely.
"You are mistaken, Lady." He replied after a moment, "I have no knowledge of another choice and even if it should come to me I no longer believe that it shall be of any aid. My time is running very short after all." And as he said it she knew it to be the truth. For if he had not begun to heal before he kin headed across the Sea to Valinor, she knew that Frodo would have to be amongst their number. She recalled suddenly the words Sam had spoken to her that had shocked her enough so that she had lead the subject away from the course it had been taking.
`I will die trying.` He had said and she knew that there had been nothing but truth in those words. She also knew that as with Frodo's beliefs, there was a deeper truth to the words one buried where only she could find it. The truth that should Sam not be able to keep Frodo upon Middle Earth by ether living or dying he would keep his Master there by force. He would in other words kill both himself and Frodo.
Leaning slightly forwards so that she might catch Frodo's attention again, she said,
"You know what will happen should you take this option, Frodo. For you have seen it already. You know also that keeping your emotions and thoughts to yourself is helping no one.
"Talk to him, Frodo. You know as well as I that if anyone can help you it is him. If you do not talk to him…" She trailed her sentence deliberately and straightened herself up. Frodo was shaking and what little colour had been within his face was gone but he still found his voice to enquire,
"Where is he?"
"By now? He talked of going up onto the walls to watch the sun set and to remember."
"Thank you." He said, before he turned and headed in the direction of the walls.
*
Sam was indeed sat upon the wall, his eyes turned to the distant shadow of Mordor.
"Remembering?" Frodo enquired. Sam's head turned slightly towards the sound of Frodo's voice and he nodded once before he turned his head again to the horizon, one hand tapping the wall beside him as an invitation for his Master to join him.
"It seems so long ago now, doesn't it, Master?" He enquired after a moment.
"Yes. So very long ago and so very far away. I believe sometimes that we were in a different world, Sam." Frodo paused and his eyes lifted to take in the shadow upon the horizon before they both spoke at the same time.
"Sam?"
"Sir?"
Frodo began to laugh, the sound beautifully lyrical, before he enquired,
"Do you wish to talk first or shall I?"
"I wish to, Sir, before I loose me nerve."
"Then talk." Frodo said. Sam turned to face his Master entirely and Frodo noticed instantly that for the first time in over a year Sam was afraid.
"It all started that night we were at Tom's, Sir. I was dreaming of the dark tower, dreaming of all that happened in that place. But things changed, Sir, my dream twisted and showed me something which let me see how blind I've been recently.
"I'm scared, Sir, that you're becoming too addicted and that I never truly found you in that place."
"Why would you believe something like that, Sam?"
"Because `tis the only thing that makes real sense, Sir, the only thing that slots together all of the jigsaw pieces if you'd rather."
"I do not understand, Sam."
"No Sir, but if you'll let me explain myself you will. You see `twas only after you'd left that place that you changed. When something about you was gone, lost forever. At first I thought `twas the Ring. That its siren caught you and mayhap that was part of it, but it wasn't everything.
"No, the real truth was that the Frodo the Orcs took in there and the one that I dragged out were two different people. I only realised what had changed about you after I had had my dream, after I knew the true source of your addition.
"For once I knew that it was the Sea that your soul craved I knew that you had changed because your desire to stay here upon Middle Earth was gone."
"That is not true, Sam. I crave the Sea, that I will admit readily, but that I wish to flee this place, that I have given up? How can you believe such a thing?"
"How can I not? All of us suffered during the Quest, Frodo, all of us lost something of ourselves. But of the four of us you are the only one who is pushing away what you have left, you are the only one rejecting your old life. What sort of a message do you think that gives out?" Sam enquired. Frodo regarded his friend with stunned silence, his eyes hardly comprehending what they were seeing.
He was perceiving now a side of Sam that he had never seen before, a sharp forceful anger that seemed to change his friend entirely. ` This` Frodo thought with sudden clarity as he stared at the molten depths of his friends hazel eyes ` was what he was like when Shelob took me.` And suddenly the idea of Sam killing the great spider single headedly was no longer stupid or even foolhardy. For this new Sam, this Sam id fire and pure un-adulterated will, could easily have taken on something twice Shelob's size without fear.
"Did you not ever think that I might be trying to protect you?" He enquired once he found his voice again.
"Protect us? PROTECT US? Do you think I'm naive? Do you think that I have not seen you falling apart in front of my eyes?
"Do you truly believe that you are protecting us by pushing us away?"
"I do not know what I believed, but you have to understand, Sam, that I am a danger to everyone. Even myself. When the addition takes me hard I know that I would be more than willing to kill to see the Sea, if only once.
"I was afraid that I would hurt someone, that I might kill someone. It is a risk I am not willing to take."
"So now what? You continue to push us away until the gap between us is large enough so that you can cross the Sea without being stopped?"
"No. Arwen has bestowed to me another gift. One that might sedate my addiction for the Sea." He replied as he pulled the shell from his belt. Sam stared at the object for a moment, the fire in his eyes sated as he did.
In the second before Sam gave his reply, Frodo was struck with a sense both of great relief and a flush of something else. Something oddly familiar to Frodo, yet new also. `I love him` he thought before Sam began to talk again.
"It's nothin` more than another cure all is it, Sir? Nothin` more than another quack remedy that you can use to convince yourself that everything's all right." He paused and the spark in his eyes broiled into an inferno. "If you feel that relyin` on false hope, that relyin` on false remedies rather than on your friends then I believe, Frodo, that we are done here." And with that he was upon his feet and gone in a blink of an eye. Frodo could only stare blindly after him, that one word cycling again and again through his mind.
Though he had often asked for Sam to drop the honorific from his name, the fact that he had done as such when Sam had been so angry with him, when there had been such venom to his voice. That such a familiarity had been used within argument was worse than any physical harm that Sam could have done him.
Worse though was the fact that such a divide between them has come at the exact point when he had realised the truth of his feelings for Sam. That one he loved so completely would hate him, tore at him in a way that nothin else could.
Bringing the shell to his ear, he listened again to the rhythm of the Sea and forgot, just for a moment, everything but that rhythm.
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T: Te he, he he. I bet you hate me for this…Good! No I don't mean that, come back I want your lovely reviews!! I actually wanted to apologise for leaving it here especially since there is going to be an extended gap between this and chapter six owing to the replacement of chapter four.
This angry Sam is brought to you in part by Tolkien's descriptions of Sam taking on Shelob and part due to Peter Jackson's commentary on the extended version of Fellowship (all the stuff right near the end about Sam's strength of will in case your wandering). Also I suppose angry Sam is a product of how I feel about Frodo at the end of the books, believe you me I was very tempted to have Sam physically slap him here but I think the emotional slap works much better.
R+R or I kill Frodo. No only kidding…well maybe I'm 10% serious…okay 15%, god!