by Sally Gardens
Chapter Nineteen: Still Round the Corner
Standing before the long mirror in his bedroom, Frodo slipped the last button of his waistcoat into place. Holly carved in oak: Molly's handiwork, of course, a Yule gift from Sam, as was the waistcoat of finely woven deep green wool. Lightly Frodo traced the tip of his finger over the button's detail, more easily felt than seen in the dim glow of the lamp with its flame hovering just above the point of extinguishing.
Muffled sounds of laughter and music seeped through the bedroom door. Frodo smoothed his palms over the front of the waistcoat and surveyed himself, top to toe. He looked much as he would have expected the Frodo of olden days to look at sixty: A quiet, graying gentlehobbit, broadening in body and thickening in limb, his face lined but still bearing the firm contours of youth. But the eyes were far too sober, even for one of maturing middle years; the eyes spoke silently of shadows, and of despair, and of a dull, grim resignation to the prospect of never again finding a way beyond either one.
Frodo draped a red silk ascot over the back of his neck, looped it at his throat, and tucked the ends into the V of his waistcoat. He gave his unruly curls a last effort at taming with his fingers. His hand slowed, fell still for a moment; then, with a snap, Frodo thrust his hand firmly into his right breech pocket, put out the lamp, and put on a smile as he opened the door.
"Deck now with holly and with evergreen, and with bright red ribbons to cheer; by candle and hearthlight chase out what has been, and hail we the new sun of the turning year..."
The impromptu quartet of males dissolved into laughter, their Yule song hailed with a smattering of merry applause from about the room. A trio of fiddlers struck up a dance, and all at once the room was alive with whirling, swooping Hobbits. Except for the sofa and chairs, which had been pushed against the walls, most of the furniture had been moved out of the parlor to make way for the crowd of friends and relations of the Gardners and of Frodo.
Children, several dozen of them, wove in and out and around the adults, scampering under tables and over chairs and running out into the hall and back into the parlor, laughing and clapping and tumbling in what seemed to be a very large, very complicated game of tag. Frodo smiled to himself, letting his mind drift.
Brandy Hall was a splendid place for a game of hide-and-seek, all the more magnificent for the bounty of Yule decorations behind which one could hide. But Frodo wanted a better place to hide. The cousins were bigger and smarter and he was tired of always being the first one to be found.
Ah, but here was a door he'd never seen. With a will, Frodo turned the knob and slipped inside, pulling the door swiftly but silently shut.
A closet? A room, apparently unused. But this wasn't good enough. Turadoc would surely find him readily enough behind the door. Frodo stepped back a pace, then another, feeling for something to hide behind. He bumped against another door.
Quickly, hastily, he pressed his ear against it, heard nothing, slipped it open and himself around it, to find himself, once his eyes adjusted to the pitch darkness, in a passage.
Splendid. Turadoc would never in a thousand years find him here.
"I win!" whispered Frodo to himself, quite pleased. He hastened silently through the passage, taking turn after turn, side passage after side passage, till he was certain that he was well hid. He tucked himself into a little hollow in one wall, settling behind a pile of dusty mathoms, and pulled up his knees and waited.
He waited for ages.
The game was surely ended by now. Frodo pushed himself up from the floor, sneezing and coughing and brushing off his breeches. He hadn't thought of that, before. Mum would have a fit if he'd gone and ruined his new Yule clothes. He'd stop by a washroom, first, before finding Turadoc and showing him and all the cousins that little Frodo was quite able to keep up with the big lads, after all.
Now, to find his way back to the party before anyone found him.
Frodo ran as fast as he could in the dark, letting one hand skim lightly along the wall. He turned this way, and that, and that, and—or was it that way he'd come—or—
Setting his jaw, Frodo ran on. And on. And on.
He was lost.
Terror snaked a tight band around his stomach, squeezing, squeezing. He pushed against it with the deepest breath he could manage and let it out in a howl.
"Da-a-ad! Da-a-a-ad!"
He sobbed and wailed and screamed for his father until his voice gave way; and still he remained alone, in the dark, lost, beyond the reach of love and comfort.
Frodo slumped against the wall and drew his knees to his chest, burying his face in his arms.
Another age of the world passed, then:
"Frodo? Frodo-lad?"
Frodo's head snapped up. "Dad?" he choked out. His voice was rough. He breathed in a great breath and pushed it out as forcefully as he could: "Dad! Dad! Over here! Dad!"
And then he felt himself being scooped into tender strong arms and he heard himself burst anew into weeping and he felt his father's arms try to still the quavering that had suddenly taken hold of his body from top to toe.
"Hush, hush, my lad," he heard Dad murmur into his ear. "All's well that ends better." Frodo nodded, and put forth all of his will to rein in his sobs till they were reduced to an occasional, shuddering, gulping gasp of air. He could feel his father's heart pounding where his cheek was pressed snugly against his father's chest.
A loud, hollow growl made both of them jump.
Frodo could feel the quiet chuckle rumbling through his father's chest. "Let's be on our way to the kitchen, my lad, and see if we can find a cure for that," said Dad, hugging Frodo tightly as he began to carry him back through the maze of corridors. Frodo clung to him, and he didn't even care if Turadoc and the rest of the cousins might see. And in the kitchen, by the light of a lone candle late in the night, Frodo sat secure in his father's lap while he devoured plum pudding and mushroom pasties and washed it all down in the warmth of mulled cider.
That had been in the days when he knew only love and family and home, and words like "more than half a Brandybuck" he had never so much as heard, let alone understood what they insinuated, and rings were merely pretty things that bound two hearts to only good—
"Hullo, Frodo!" Frodo started, finding himself wrapped in a quick but fond embrace from his cousin Daisy Boffin. "It is good to see you home, again." Her bobbed hair fluffed around her radiant face like a cloud of white cotton. When had it—?
Frodo forced himself to smile. "Yes. Home," he said, and hoped it was convincing.
"Frodo!"
"Hullo, Milo." Frodo turned his smile to the Hobbit who had clapped him on the back. "I see your lads are providing the music for the evening."
"Oh, yes," Daisy breathlessly interjected. "Why, the Burrows brothers are famed in all the country round for their fiddling. 'Twould hardly be a party without them!"
Milo beamed. "I thank you, Daisy, for your kind words. I am indeed proud of the lads, I am—if they can still be called lads, grown as they are, and the youngest but two years from his coming of age."
"Oh, heavens above, they do grow so quickly, Milo, do they not?" Daisy clapped a hand to her heart. "It seems hardly the blink of an eye since Mosco was toddling about in nappies, and now look at him, married and grown and with a lad of his own."
"Yes. Yes," answered Milo, wistfully dabbing where one might possibly have imagined a tear to be welling, if one imagined well. "And Moro's to be wed this spring, and even Minto's got his eye on the Banks lass, though I've made it quite plain to him that I shan't permit so much as the setting of a date till he's reached the age. Young love can be such a bother for the elders."
"Oh, I know," agreed Daisy with an emphatic wave of her hand. "Isn't it just the way..."
Giving a slight nod, Frodo quietly slipped away, leaving the two to their talk of young love and the passing years. He looked around the room at all the cheer-filled faces, laughing and chattering and eating and drinking. He drifted toward the long serving table at the side of the room, a table laden with Yule breads and cakes and candies and a huge bowl of wine punch with a cluster of filled cups arranged next to it. He briefly, without any real enthusiasm, considered eating or drinking. He wondered where his appetite had fled.
"Heavens above, Frodo, my lad! Leave a few crumbs for the guests!"
Frodo rolled his eyes up to grin at Bilbo. His mouth was too full of rum cake to allow the grin to reach his mouth, but by the look of paternal exasperation on Bilbo's face Frodo could see that the grin had fared well enough with only his eyes in its service.
Bilbo shook his head, laughed, clapped a hand on Frodo's shoulder. He never could stay cross with Frodo for very long.
Frodo watched while Bilbo mingled with assorted Bagginses and Boffins and Bolgers and sundry other relations near and distant. Most of them, thought Frodo, came only because they never could turn down a free meal, but everyone seemed to be having a pleasant enough time. He scooped a handful of dried apples and currants from the cut glass serving dish and tipped his head back, letting the bits of fruit cascade into his waiting mouth.
Good. Bilbo hadn't seen, that time.
Frodo smiled to himself, tapping his foot in time to the flutes and fiddles that Bilbo had hired for the occasion. The parlor glittered with golden ribbons and beads and baubles, the light of a hundred candles sparkling in hundreds of tiny crystal snowflakes that dangled from the ceiling. The scent of pine and the aroma of simmering spices from far countries filled Frodo's senses, made him giddy in a drowsy-dizzy-tingly pleasant sort of way. Then a sweet lass with a sprig of mistletoe bound to her bouncing brown curls stepped up to him, and what could he do but dance...
Frodo watched Sam as he laughed merrily with his brother-in-law Tom Cotton. Dear Sam. Frodo smiled fondly to himself, and redoubled his efforts to maintain an appearance of cheer.
Sam happened to look up, then, and his eyes met Frodo's.
With great effort Frodo kept his face locked in its blithe mask. Sam's not fooled, was his first, dreadful realization. He knows what I'm doing.
The second: He's doing it, too.
Frodo felt his knees buckle. He bumped against the serving table. Stumbling, grasping, he thrust out an awkward arm and felt it collide with several cups. He spun about to catch them, but too late.
"Blast," he muttered, staring forlornly at the red wine punch seeping irretrievably into the white cloth covering the table.
"They're not all spilt," murmured a familiar voice at his side. Frodo looked past the spill, and saw that there were, indeed, two cups still standing.
"Thank you, Molly," he said, taking one and dashing its contents down in a single gulp. The wine sent a thread of warmth spiraling through his chest.
Molly picked up the other cup. There was no mistaking the amusement in her eyes as she held the cup out to him.
"Oh. No, thank you," stammered Frodo, flustered. "Thank you. I'm quite all right, now."
She said nothing, but her eyes shone as she sipped from the cup. The fiddles of the Burrows brothers had quickened into a rollicking two-step, and Frodo was dimly aware of the laughing dancers weaving and whirling past him.
Molly glanced over at the dancers, then back at Frodo. "Do you dance?" she asked, setting down her cup.
Frodo blinked, and shrank back, just a bit. "I—I used to. Before."
She smiled, holding out her hand. "Show me. Please?"
He shook his head. "That was before," he repeated in a small voice.
Her smile softened. "I didn't know you before," she said, and waited.
He looked back at her in slowly dawning amazement. Unable to think of a counter-argument, Frodo finally nodded, smiling slightly as he raised his left hand to take Molly's right. "We'll have to adapt a bit," he said.
"I know," she said, planting her left hand on his right shoulder. Kicking up her heels, she pulled him into the dance.
...and he danced, and he danced, till he was flushed with the joy of the tide, cinnamon and crystal and soft flesh and a chorus of mirth all blending into a drink more heady than the homestilled "likker" the gardener's youngest son had once swiped from his Dad to share with Frodo in the strictest confidence. And he kissed the lass, whose name he could not recall, or was it that she kissed him; but it was Yule, and it mattered not who kissed whom, as long as certain bounds of propriety were held in respect.
"You dance well," said Molly.
Frodo nodded. "Thank you," he managed to gasp. The pace was rather more lively than he'd grown accustomed to. "I thought I'd forgot how."
And Frodo laughed, and looked to Bilbo, who was quite caught up in a merry exchange with a cluster of gentlehobbits. And Frodo looked on with wonder, marveling at the centenarian's vigor, hale and youthful, untouchable, it seemed, by time's vicissitudes—
Accept the changes, Frodo, my lad.
Frodo jumped. He looked about, half expecting—
"What is it?" asked Molly, her voice a soothing balm smoothing the frayed edges of his nerves.
Frodo shook his head. "Nothing," he said, a rueful smirk fleeting upon his face before he settled back into a semblance of ease.
"Come along." Molly led him away from the dance floor to the serving table. "You've had scarcely two bites the whole evening," she said, handing him a plate.
"I wasn't hungry," said Frodo, shrugging, but taking the plate, all the same.
Frodo had kept up Bilbo's tradition of hosting a party every Yule at Bag End. On this particular Yule, he was feeling especially thoughtful as he looked about the parlor: Sam was, as Sam was wont to do, busying himself seeing to it that everyone had a full plate and a full cup. Frodo wished Sam would quit fussing over the guests and recall that on this night he, himself, was also a guest. But that was Sam, and Frodo was sure he'd never change. Frodo shifted his glance and saw how Rose Cotton looked at Sam. He'd have to do something about that, see if he could tear Sam away from serving long enough to enjoy a dance or two with Rose. And, looking past Rose, Frodo saw how Berylla Chubb looked at him, when she'd thought he wasn't looking, and how she quickly averted her eyes when she saw he was.
A great longing came over him, then, to stop dreaming of adventure and to settle into the comforts of hearth and home. Bilbo was surely no longer anywhere Frodo could follow, however much Frodo still wished to believe otherwise. For what, then, did he tarry? He would be turning fifty in the coming year; high time to put away the fancies of youth and look to raising a family.
So resolved, he had asked Berylla Chubb for the honor of a dance. And he had meant to begin courting her, after Yule; and he had, indeed, paid call a few times, but the old restlessness had reasserted itself with new strength, and he found himself wandering again, wondering at himself, not quite able to bring himself to be done with dreams of there and back again.
And then, early in the spring, Gandalf had returned to Bag End, bearing news...
Deep in the night, Frodo stood outside of Bag End, gazing westward. All of the guests, save Molly, had long since gone home. The children had fallen asleep, one by one, Frodo-lad being the most stubborn in his determination to keep the New Year's vigil; but he, too, had at last faded, leaning against his father's shoulder, and his father had soon followed suit. Molly and Rose had been engrossed in soft, earnest conversation, and Frodo had slipped away, wrapping himself snugly in the thin and tattered cloak that had been Bilbo's.
It will not be the same. I am not the same.
There was no real going back. He had known it, long ago. He had hoped he could forget. He had hoped.
He looked over the Shire. He looked to the West. He saw only night.
He had wanted to come back. He reminded himself of that. Grace, he had called it. An extraordinary, unexpected, unmerited favor: for a mortal to be granted not only passage but return. But return to what? What grace was to be found in this endless exile?
All that I had. All that I might have had.
The blue-black sky of night began to fade to sapphire.
I leave...
Frodo heard the front door click open, then shut.
"All the others have fallen asleep." The words were spoken in a hush. "We, alone, remain to hail the turning of the year."
Frodo shook his head, still facing the west. "There is no turning for me, Molly. I am bound, forever bound, to that accursed Ring; forever ruled, even in its demise, by its power."
A space of silence. Then, softly: "No taste of food, no feel of water, no sound of wind, no memory of tree or grass or flower—do you truly say that none of these have been restored to you with the unmaking of the Ring?"
He said nothing.
Molly's voice pressed on, gentle as spring rain, tenacious as the rooted dandelion. "The Ring is gone, Frodo. Its power is no more, save in memory. All that remains are scars, scars and shadows, marking where once it passed."
Frodo stiffened. He looked fixedly to the fading west. "You never bore the Ring. You know not of what you speak."
He heard a sharp intake of breath. Then he heard nothing. She was so quiet, he might have thought she had left him, but he sensed she remained standing not far behind him.
"No, Frodo," he at last heard her sigh. "I never did bear the Ring."
He turned sharply, looking intently into her eyes: There was sorrow, and pain, and age far beyond her years.
He closed his eyes.
A light touch on his arm brought him back. He lifted his head, his eyes now resting upon two silver wine goblets that flickered with a last glint of light before Eärendil's star faded into the first light of dawn.
"We cannot unspill what has been spilt," Molly said, holding out to him one of the goblets. "Only drink from the cups that are left to us—leastways if we're not fool enough to be spilling those, as well, in our grief for the ones we can't take back."
As the sun slipped above the horizon to flood the morning sky, the silver cup was transfigured with golden light. Frodo felt a smile emerging, a true smile: a warmth radiating from some long-neglected ember still sheltered deep within, at last breaking forth upon his face. He started to reach, by habit, with his left hand, but halted and let it fall back to his side.
From deep within his pocket he drew forth his right hand. With his right hand, maimed, he reached for the cup and took firm hold. "To the turning of the year," said Frodo, drinking deeply. The light of the sun shone richly in Molly's eyes as she joined his wish with her own.