Aratlithiel - Thank you for the compliment regarding the dialogue. That's my favorite part of any story. And thank you again for your help as beta for my stories!
Peony - Fear can make people behave in unexpected ways for sure. You've got Lotho pegged as far as your predictions of his future behavior.
FrodoBaggins1982 - Don't worry, Lotho isn't going to get too overly friendly with Frodo. He will still evolve into the creepy character who proclaims himself 'chief' later on. I promise to get Frodo out of the pickle he's in, and soon!
FrodoBaggins87 - The things you have been waiting for will be happening in this chapter. As to the rapid updates, I'm addicted to all those little e-mails that say "Review Alert". Gotta have my daily dose!
Ovo - Thanks for joining us! There will be more 'go Bilbo!' moments in this story.
TTTurtle - You mentioned that you can virtually 'see' the chapters playing out as you read them. The same thing happens to me when I'm writing. It's like I'm watching a movie in my head, and just writing what I see and hear. Is anyone going to die in this story? I'll answer that question here in this chapter!
Arwen Baggins - I hope you grandmother is doing better. Sometimes it seems like hope is all that's left, and it has to be preserved at all costs. We've got some hobbits to rescue, don't we?
Illyria Pffyffin - We can pity Lotho a little bit in this story. He's just got his priorities all wrong. Buckland is just a little too far away for Saradoc and Merry to come and help, but you'll see them again before the story is over!
Iorhael - The story still has a couple more chapters to go before we reach the end. As to Lotho's behavior in the future, there are two roads he could take. I'll let you know which one when we get closer to the end.
Shirebound - You won't have to wait any longer! We'll see just how long Lotho's good will lasts.
Curious Cat - You'll be able to see how Lotho reacts once he's out of this mess starting in chapter 20. He could have been a decent sort if he had just chosen to be.
Fantasy Fan - Great speculation on how Lotho might have turned out if not for his upbringing. Your comments defining Frodo as having 'endurance without hope' were also wonderful. That's one of the things that makes Frodo so heroic, isn't it?
Amelia Rose - Frodo's talk about hope shows that he believes in it. He will need such belief and stout - heartedness where he's headed. Sorry I didn't get them out in the last chapter, but we're getting there!
Camellia - Gamgee - Took - Glad the images are so vivid for you! I had not envisioned these to be the same empty smials from "The Way of Vengeance", but that would have been awfully ironic, wouldn't it?
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Chapter 19 - A Light in the Darkness
Frodo paused to rest again from his labors, and within a few moments he was dozing. Someone or something seemed almost to be singing to him, telling him to sleep, to close his eyes and let the darkness around him draw him in and hold him. It was so soothing, so tempting, so hard to resist.
Another voice now seemed to break through the soft whisperings of the one that beckoned him to drift away, and he opened his eyes at its command.
"Frodo! Don't do it! Don't let go!" The voice said softly but insistently.
"Merry?" Frodo said aloud and opened his eyes. He could still see nothing in the blackness, but he was all but sure he had heard Merry telling him something important. "Merry, I hear you. Where are you, Merry?" Frodo called out aloud.
A hand grasped him and shook him, and he gasped as the shock jolted his shoulder. The shaking woke him fully and the dream voices were gone, replaced by another.
"There's nobody here, Frodo," Lotho said grimly. "Just you and me, and that pile of debris in the doorway, mocking us."
"I must have been dreaming," Frodo said faintly. He was dizzy and his mind was becoming increasingly muddled.
"Who were you talking to?" Lotho asked idly. He had thought he'd heard or seen something a couple of times, but he knew it was just the effect of oxygen deprivation on his mind.
"I thought I heard my cousin Merry," Frodo said, staring into the dark. "He told me not to let go. It was so clear, I could have sworn he was right next to me."
"Your mind is playing tricks on you," Lotho informed him. "You're hearing things."
Frodo didn't want to believe Lotho's words. It heartened him to think of Merry encouraging him and trying to raise his spirits. That was certainly what Merry would do if he were there, wasn't it? But Merry wasn't there. He was at Brandy Hall, and he had no idea of what was happening to his elder cousin in Hobbiton.
"I know he isn't here, not really," Frodo said softly. "But he's with me in spirit wherever I go."
Lotho didn't respond, but he considered Frodo's words. What did it feel like to have someone would could be such a part of one's life that they seemed present even when they were far away? Lotho found himself envying his young cousin all the more for the love that surrounded him.
~*~
"Why haven't they got them out yet?" Lobelia fairly wailed as she dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. "They must work harder and faster! My Lotho - "
"Your boy is going to be fine, Miz Lobelia," Bell said patiently. She rolled her eyes as she turned to ladle hot soup into a bowl for one of the workers. She was all smiles and reassurances when she turned around again. "Those fellows in there are getting closer every minute to breakin' through and findin' them. Why, those two lads are probably diggin' their way out too, and everyone is goin' to meet somewheres in the middle!"
"It was probably that Bucklander's doing, my Lotho being in a wretched place like this," Lobelia nattered on imperiously. "Lotho has more sense than to go poking about in abandoned delvings."
Bell frowned at the obviously derogatory reference to Frodo. "Well, Miz Lobelia, I can't say whether Mr. Frodo's got anything to do with Mr. Lotho's bein' here, but I'd wager that Mr. Frodo wouldn't be here himself if not for some encouragement of some kind." She didn't want to step out of place, but it nettled her to hear Lobelia speak so of a fine lad like Frodo.
"Are you saying it's Lotho's fault all this has come about?" Lobelia shrilled angrily.
"I ain't said nothin' of the kind, Miz Lobelia," Bell soothed. "It's just me and mine have got to know Mr. Frodo a bit, and he'd have to be given a good reason to go explorin' empty tunnels and such."
Lobelia thankfully said nothing further, but stomped off toward the hill to harangue the diggers and haulers for not having brought her son to safety as yet.
"I don't much like Miz Lobelia," May told her mother. "She's rather mean, isn't she Mum?"
Bell sighed and hugged her daughter. "I don't think she's really mean, May," Bell explained patiently. "I just don't think she's happy somehow. She loves her boy, sure as Mr. Bilbo loves Mr. Frodo, and she just wants him back safe."
May nodded. She supposed that Lobelia truly did love her son and was just as distraught about Lotho's entrapment as they and Bilbo were about Frodo's, but she didn't see why Lobelia had to make such a fuss about it and find fault with everyone around her. She thought about the hobbits who were working to save the trapped tweens and felt pity for their having to deal with Lobelia shrieking at them.
~*~
In the tunnel, work was progressing steadily, and the diggers had cleared a great deal of debris out of their way. More stood between them and their goal, and Halfred attacked it grimly. His arms ached and his back was starting to feel the strain as well, but he kept at it single - mindedly, driving the shovel into the rubble again and again.
The diggers would dump their shovels full of debris into buckets, which were passed down a line from one hobbit to the next. The buckets would be emptied and passed up a second line to come back to the diggers again for refilling. The process continued apace, with hobbits trading tasks with each other when someone wearied of hauling or digging. The soup and bread revived the tired ones and the hours passed tensely.
As Hamson dug his shovel in, a fresh chunk came down from above and half buried him on the spot. A great commotion arose as hobbits rushed in to pull the young Gamgee free from the rubble, and curses erupted at the new setback. The sounds of digging and shouting filled the night air hour by hour as the rescuers strove to regain lost ground and to break through the debris that imprisoned the two tweens.
~*~
Lotho heard a groan and a thud somewhere nearby. He called out in the direction from which the sound had come, and no answer came back. Frodo had been clawing at the debris again but Lotho could no longer hear the sound of earth and rock being moved by the hobbit's small hands.
"Blast you for a Buckland Bookworm!" Lotho shouted as he dragged himself forward a few inches. A sweat broke out on his brow and he gritted his teeth as he slowly moved toward where Frodo had fallen. He reached out and his fingertips brushed the fabric of Frodo's sleeve. He forced himself to stretch out until he had a firm hold on his cousin's arm.
"Wake up, you little - " He shook the arm as hard as he could and was rewarded with a low moan.
Frodo had passed out momentarily and came to as Lotho shook him. His head spun and ached terribly as he tried to get his bearings again.
"Now that I've got your attention, Cousin, just make sure you don't die and leave me to clean up the mess, all right?" It wasn't much encouragement, but it was all Lotho felt up to at the time. Besides, it felt good to yell at Frodo, whether or not it should.
Somehow, Lotho found that he just couldn't hate Frodo quite as much as he had wanted to. It was impossible, because Frodo wouldn't hate him back. Lotho could pound on him, sink him in a frigid pond, and threaten him openly, and Frodo would keep extending his hand in search of friendship. They would likely never be friends, Lotho knew, but he had to admit to a grudging respect for the young cousin who had appeared and placed himself firmly between Lotho and a sizeable fortune.
How someone so pale and fragile - looking could go forth with such strength and persistence was a mystery to Lotho. Frodo was surely suffering from the injury to his shoulder, yet he had doggedly torn at the wall of debris that denied them freedom and fresh air. But that strength was fading now, and exhaustion was evident in the short, rasping breaths Lotho could hear from nearby. It was the sound of lungs that were starving for air and finding only enough to barely sustain them, and Lotho was not much better off.
"Did you hear me, Frodo?" Lotho said, still gripping his cousin's arm.
"I heard you," Frodo said in a near whisper. "Keep talking to me."
Keep talking? Lotho searched for something to say. It was hardly appropriate, he knew, but he resorted to telling some of the rather off - color jokes he had learned from Ted a week earlier. Frodo might have laughed at some of them if he were more coherent.
~*~
Halfred was about to jam the shovel into the debris again when he suddenly paused and gestured for silence in the tunnel. It was probably just his imagination, but he thought he had heard something, a faint sound of a voice, someone shouting.
"Quiet," he said, heedless for once of properly respectful speech. "I thought I heard somethin'!" The other hobbits moved forward to crowd close to the wall of debris.
"Somethin' like what?" one of the other hobbits asked. If it was the sound of more of the tunnel giving way, he wanted to make sure it wasn't about to happen anywhere near him.
"Like a voice," Halfred replied with some hesitation. He didn't want to raise hopes falsely. "I thought I heard a voice."
That was all any of the workers needed to hear. Those with shovels bent to the task with new energy and the buckets were circling round almost more quickly than they could be filled up again.
~*~
"That one really is funny, when you don't have your mind on other things," Lotho said of the joke he had just finished telling. He fell silent, having exhausted his supply of questionable humor for the time being. "Heard any other good ones lately?" he muttered.
Frodo struggled to shape a coherent reply. "I - I heard," he stammered. "Something - " he trailed off, drifting again until a nudge from Lotho roused him. "Sounds like - like digging." Frodo fell silent and Lotho stopped shaking him to listen for the sound his cousin had mentioned.
It was a moment later, but he heard it, or at least imagined that he did. It was a faint scraping. Metal against rock? The sound grew louder and Lotho thought he heard voices accompanying it. "Frodo!" Lotho nudged Frodo again. "I hear it, Frodo!"
Frodo wasn't paying attention. He was barely conscious and his eyelids felt like they were made of stone. He opened them with a great effort and he realized he must be dead when he saw a shaft of light shining through the darkness. Had he been able to keep his eyes open a moment longer, he would have seen rock and dirt tumbling away to reveal the hands of the rescuers tearing a path up and over the remaining mound of debris.
Lotho chose that moment to lose consciousness as well, whether out of exhaustion or sheer relief, he would never know with certainty. Sam helped Bilbo to climb over the rubble to Frodo's side. Otho reached his son a moment later and tears of relief flowed freely as those who were thought lost were found again.
~*~To be continued~*~
Peony - Fear can make people behave in unexpected ways for sure. You've got Lotho pegged as far as your predictions of his future behavior.
FrodoBaggins1982 - Don't worry, Lotho isn't going to get too overly friendly with Frodo. He will still evolve into the creepy character who proclaims himself 'chief' later on. I promise to get Frodo out of the pickle he's in, and soon!
FrodoBaggins87 - The things you have been waiting for will be happening in this chapter. As to the rapid updates, I'm addicted to all those little e-mails that say "Review Alert". Gotta have my daily dose!
Ovo - Thanks for joining us! There will be more 'go Bilbo!' moments in this story.
TTTurtle - You mentioned that you can virtually 'see' the chapters playing out as you read them. The same thing happens to me when I'm writing. It's like I'm watching a movie in my head, and just writing what I see and hear. Is anyone going to die in this story? I'll answer that question here in this chapter!
Arwen Baggins - I hope you grandmother is doing better. Sometimes it seems like hope is all that's left, and it has to be preserved at all costs. We've got some hobbits to rescue, don't we?
Illyria Pffyffin - We can pity Lotho a little bit in this story. He's just got his priorities all wrong. Buckland is just a little too far away for Saradoc and Merry to come and help, but you'll see them again before the story is over!
Iorhael - The story still has a couple more chapters to go before we reach the end. As to Lotho's behavior in the future, there are two roads he could take. I'll let you know which one when we get closer to the end.
Shirebound - You won't have to wait any longer! We'll see just how long Lotho's good will lasts.
Curious Cat - You'll be able to see how Lotho reacts once he's out of this mess starting in chapter 20. He could have been a decent sort if he had just chosen to be.
Fantasy Fan - Great speculation on how Lotho might have turned out if not for his upbringing. Your comments defining Frodo as having 'endurance without hope' were also wonderful. That's one of the things that makes Frodo so heroic, isn't it?
Amelia Rose - Frodo's talk about hope shows that he believes in it. He will need such belief and stout - heartedness where he's headed. Sorry I didn't get them out in the last chapter, but we're getting there!
Camellia - Gamgee - Took - Glad the images are so vivid for you! I had not envisioned these to be the same empty smials from "The Way of Vengeance", but that would have been awfully ironic, wouldn't it?
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Chapter 19 - A Light in the Darkness
Frodo paused to rest again from his labors, and within a few moments he was dozing. Someone or something seemed almost to be singing to him, telling him to sleep, to close his eyes and let the darkness around him draw him in and hold him. It was so soothing, so tempting, so hard to resist.
Another voice now seemed to break through the soft whisperings of the one that beckoned him to drift away, and he opened his eyes at its command.
"Frodo! Don't do it! Don't let go!" The voice said softly but insistently.
"Merry?" Frodo said aloud and opened his eyes. He could still see nothing in the blackness, but he was all but sure he had heard Merry telling him something important. "Merry, I hear you. Where are you, Merry?" Frodo called out aloud.
A hand grasped him and shook him, and he gasped as the shock jolted his shoulder. The shaking woke him fully and the dream voices were gone, replaced by another.
"There's nobody here, Frodo," Lotho said grimly. "Just you and me, and that pile of debris in the doorway, mocking us."
"I must have been dreaming," Frodo said faintly. He was dizzy and his mind was becoming increasingly muddled.
"Who were you talking to?" Lotho asked idly. He had thought he'd heard or seen something a couple of times, but he knew it was just the effect of oxygen deprivation on his mind.
"I thought I heard my cousin Merry," Frodo said, staring into the dark. "He told me not to let go. It was so clear, I could have sworn he was right next to me."
"Your mind is playing tricks on you," Lotho informed him. "You're hearing things."
Frodo didn't want to believe Lotho's words. It heartened him to think of Merry encouraging him and trying to raise his spirits. That was certainly what Merry would do if he were there, wasn't it? But Merry wasn't there. He was at Brandy Hall, and he had no idea of what was happening to his elder cousin in Hobbiton.
"I know he isn't here, not really," Frodo said softly. "But he's with me in spirit wherever I go."
Lotho didn't respond, but he considered Frodo's words. What did it feel like to have someone would could be such a part of one's life that they seemed present even when they were far away? Lotho found himself envying his young cousin all the more for the love that surrounded him.
~*~
"Why haven't they got them out yet?" Lobelia fairly wailed as she dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. "They must work harder and faster! My Lotho - "
"Your boy is going to be fine, Miz Lobelia," Bell said patiently. She rolled her eyes as she turned to ladle hot soup into a bowl for one of the workers. She was all smiles and reassurances when she turned around again. "Those fellows in there are getting closer every minute to breakin' through and findin' them. Why, those two lads are probably diggin' their way out too, and everyone is goin' to meet somewheres in the middle!"
"It was probably that Bucklander's doing, my Lotho being in a wretched place like this," Lobelia nattered on imperiously. "Lotho has more sense than to go poking about in abandoned delvings."
Bell frowned at the obviously derogatory reference to Frodo. "Well, Miz Lobelia, I can't say whether Mr. Frodo's got anything to do with Mr. Lotho's bein' here, but I'd wager that Mr. Frodo wouldn't be here himself if not for some encouragement of some kind." She didn't want to step out of place, but it nettled her to hear Lobelia speak so of a fine lad like Frodo.
"Are you saying it's Lotho's fault all this has come about?" Lobelia shrilled angrily.
"I ain't said nothin' of the kind, Miz Lobelia," Bell soothed. "It's just me and mine have got to know Mr. Frodo a bit, and he'd have to be given a good reason to go explorin' empty tunnels and such."
Lobelia thankfully said nothing further, but stomped off toward the hill to harangue the diggers and haulers for not having brought her son to safety as yet.
"I don't much like Miz Lobelia," May told her mother. "She's rather mean, isn't she Mum?"
Bell sighed and hugged her daughter. "I don't think she's really mean, May," Bell explained patiently. "I just don't think she's happy somehow. She loves her boy, sure as Mr. Bilbo loves Mr. Frodo, and she just wants him back safe."
May nodded. She supposed that Lobelia truly did love her son and was just as distraught about Lotho's entrapment as they and Bilbo were about Frodo's, but she didn't see why Lobelia had to make such a fuss about it and find fault with everyone around her. She thought about the hobbits who were working to save the trapped tweens and felt pity for their having to deal with Lobelia shrieking at them.
~*~
In the tunnel, work was progressing steadily, and the diggers had cleared a great deal of debris out of their way. More stood between them and their goal, and Halfred attacked it grimly. His arms ached and his back was starting to feel the strain as well, but he kept at it single - mindedly, driving the shovel into the rubble again and again.
The diggers would dump their shovels full of debris into buckets, which were passed down a line from one hobbit to the next. The buckets would be emptied and passed up a second line to come back to the diggers again for refilling. The process continued apace, with hobbits trading tasks with each other when someone wearied of hauling or digging. The soup and bread revived the tired ones and the hours passed tensely.
As Hamson dug his shovel in, a fresh chunk came down from above and half buried him on the spot. A great commotion arose as hobbits rushed in to pull the young Gamgee free from the rubble, and curses erupted at the new setback. The sounds of digging and shouting filled the night air hour by hour as the rescuers strove to regain lost ground and to break through the debris that imprisoned the two tweens.
~*~
Lotho heard a groan and a thud somewhere nearby. He called out in the direction from which the sound had come, and no answer came back. Frodo had been clawing at the debris again but Lotho could no longer hear the sound of earth and rock being moved by the hobbit's small hands.
"Blast you for a Buckland Bookworm!" Lotho shouted as he dragged himself forward a few inches. A sweat broke out on his brow and he gritted his teeth as he slowly moved toward where Frodo had fallen. He reached out and his fingertips brushed the fabric of Frodo's sleeve. He forced himself to stretch out until he had a firm hold on his cousin's arm.
"Wake up, you little - " He shook the arm as hard as he could and was rewarded with a low moan.
Frodo had passed out momentarily and came to as Lotho shook him. His head spun and ached terribly as he tried to get his bearings again.
"Now that I've got your attention, Cousin, just make sure you don't die and leave me to clean up the mess, all right?" It wasn't much encouragement, but it was all Lotho felt up to at the time. Besides, it felt good to yell at Frodo, whether or not it should.
Somehow, Lotho found that he just couldn't hate Frodo quite as much as he had wanted to. It was impossible, because Frodo wouldn't hate him back. Lotho could pound on him, sink him in a frigid pond, and threaten him openly, and Frodo would keep extending his hand in search of friendship. They would likely never be friends, Lotho knew, but he had to admit to a grudging respect for the young cousin who had appeared and placed himself firmly between Lotho and a sizeable fortune.
How someone so pale and fragile - looking could go forth with such strength and persistence was a mystery to Lotho. Frodo was surely suffering from the injury to his shoulder, yet he had doggedly torn at the wall of debris that denied them freedom and fresh air. But that strength was fading now, and exhaustion was evident in the short, rasping breaths Lotho could hear from nearby. It was the sound of lungs that were starving for air and finding only enough to barely sustain them, and Lotho was not much better off.
"Did you hear me, Frodo?" Lotho said, still gripping his cousin's arm.
"I heard you," Frodo said in a near whisper. "Keep talking to me."
Keep talking? Lotho searched for something to say. It was hardly appropriate, he knew, but he resorted to telling some of the rather off - color jokes he had learned from Ted a week earlier. Frodo might have laughed at some of them if he were more coherent.
~*~
Halfred was about to jam the shovel into the debris again when he suddenly paused and gestured for silence in the tunnel. It was probably just his imagination, but he thought he had heard something, a faint sound of a voice, someone shouting.
"Quiet," he said, heedless for once of properly respectful speech. "I thought I heard somethin'!" The other hobbits moved forward to crowd close to the wall of debris.
"Somethin' like what?" one of the other hobbits asked. If it was the sound of more of the tunnel giving way, he wanted to make sure it wasn't about to happen anywhere near him.
"Like a voice," Halfred replied with some hesitation. He didn't want to raise hopes falsely. "I thought I heard a voice."
That was all any of the workers needed to hear. Those with shovels bent to the task with new energy and the buckets were circling round almost more quickly than they could be filled up again.
~*~
"That one really is funny, when you don't have your mind on other things," Lotho said of the joke he had just finished telling. He fell silent, having exhausted his supply of questionable humor for the time being. "Heard any other good ones lately?" he muttered.
Frodo struggled to shape a coherent reply. "I - I heard," he stammered. "Something - " he trailed off, drifting again until a nudge from Lotho roused him. "Sounds like - like digging." Frodo fell silent and Lotho stopped shaking him to listen for the sound his cousin had mentioned.
It was a moment later, but he heard it, or at least imagined that he did. It was a faint scraping. Metal against rock? The sound grew louder and Lotho thought he heard voices accompanying it. "Frodo!" Lotho nudged Frodo again. "I hear it, Frodo!"
Frodo wasn't paying attention. He was barely conscious and his eyelids felt like they were made of stone. He opened them with a great effort and he realized he must be dead when he saw a shaft of light shining through the darkness. Had he been able to keep his eyes open a moment longer, he would have seen rock and dirt tumbling away to reveal the hands of the rescuers tearing a path up and over the remaining mound of debris.
Lotho chose that moment to lose consciousness as well, whether out of exhaustion or sheer relief, he would never know with certainty. Sam helped Bilbo to climb over the rubble to Frodo's side. Otho reached his son a moment later and tears of relief flowed freely as those who were thought lost were found again.
~*~To be continued~*~