by Sally Gardens
Chapter Twenty-two: My Appointed Road
Molly sat with Frodo at the kitchen table in Bag End. It was another day in which Sam and Rose and the children had gone to the Cotton farm, leaving Molly and Frodo to sit in peace, talking quietly and working on their respective tasks while the winter rains washed against the shuttered windows.
Several times since his return from Buckland, Molly had invited Frodo to sit at her own kitchen table for tea and chat while she worked on her buttons and beads and he worked on whatever he was writing in that new green book of his. But he seemed strangely shy about entering her home. "People will talk," he said, whenever she brought up the matter, as if the talebearers of Hobbiton had not already talked and talked about her until Spinster Piper had become more a figure of legend than a neighbor down the road.
Of course, dear Frodo likely had his head too buried in his books to take note of the talk about town.
A light tap, tap, tap of metal against glass made Molly look up.
She bit her lip. He was perfectly old enough to know better—
Frodo happened to look up, then. He caught her eye and, smiling sheepishly, stopped tapping the pen's nib against the ink bottle.
"Sorry." He dipped the nib into the ink and returned to writing.
Molly returned to the bead she was carving, but it wasn't long before the scratch of pen over paper again ceased.
She looked up. Frodo was staring at the kitchen window, the end of the pen clenched in his teeth.
"My life was at an end," he murmured. "My part in the story was done." He took the pen out of his teeth and looked deeply into Molly's eyes. "I have never been more certain of anything. And I have never been more wrong."
Molly smiled gently. "You look quite alive to me," she said.
"You'd think I'd have seen it. I mean, till now all I've seen is that I was wounded, wounded, I'll never be as I was before. I thought I was doomed. But now all I can see is that I was spared."
Molly nodded.
"I was spared, Molly! Time and again I was spared! The knife at Weathertop, the sting of the spider, the destruction of Mordor—I lived, countless times I lived when time and again I came that close to death."
Frodo waved his pen about, punctuating his words.
"That ought to have told me something, don't you think? It's as if something, or someone, has been shouting, 'Frodo Baggins, you were meant to live!' and till now I've been stone deaf to it."
Molly couldn't help but smile.
"I was meant to live, Molly! To what end, I don't know, but I do know it, as surely as I have ever known anything in my life. I was meant to live."
A few drops of ink landed on the bodice of her dress, and Molly bit back a few words that good lasses weren't supposed to know, but knew, all the same. It was one of her favorite dresses, and she hadn't many, after all.
Frodo seemed to have come to the very same realization, for he suddenly fell silent, his eyes falling upon the ink-splattered bodice, and just as suddenly he burst out, "Oh! Molly! I am sorry! I shall buy you another dress, as fine as you like."
Then, abruptly, they both became conscious of where his eyes were fixed. Frodo's face flushed terribly red, and he dropped his gaze. Immediately he was once again intent upon his writing.
Molly fanned away the heat in her own face and took up her beadwork. She finished the bead she'd been working on, and began another.
"Don't misunderstand me." Frodo put down his pen and looked up at Molly. "I am dreading March. With everything that is in me, I wish I could flee, escape, not have to face it. But even in the Elvenhome I had to face it—yet somehow I was able to face it, endure it. I have to find that spark of endurance again. I have to remember that the shadows do pass, and not let them daunt me. If I can do that..."
Molly leaned across the table and clasped his hand. "You will," she said, her eyes never leaving his.
March came in, unseasonably mild. Frodo hoped it would remain that way.
"Well, Frodo," said Sam one evening in the study. "It's all settled. Tom Cotton'll do duty for me for a few days, so I'll have the thirteenth to spend with you, longer if you need it."
Frodo cradled his pipe in his fingers, thinking how much it looked like a pipe Bilbo used to especially favor. "That's awfully kind of you, Sam," he said.
Sam grunted.
"You don't have to, you know."
"I know."
"I mean, I am very glad that you wish to help me, if, indeed, anything can help me, but I shouldn't wish for you to burden your—"
"Confound it, Frodo!"
The pipe clattered upon the floor at Frodo's feet. Frodo looked up, his jaw hanging.
"Burden this and burden that!" Sam glared at him, his face red. "Enough! The only burden you ever put on me was the burden of having to live everything for you that you thought you couldn't have for yourself, and I can't bear it no more!"
Frodo could not speak. He gaped, motionless save for a slight tremor in his right hand.
"Frodo." Tears glittered in Sam's eyes. "I can't live your story for you. I can't. I've got my own story to live, and for seven long years I've been trying to live for both of us, and it's tearing me in two. Do you truly wish not to burden me, Frodo?"
Frodo gulped. "Truly, Sam," he answered, almost whispering.
"Then take back your life. Live your own story, even if you can't write it quite the way you might've wrote it before. And let me do what I can to help you live it, through dark days and light—leastways till such time as you might find some other, better keeper."
Frodo let out a little laugh, which released a few tears that had been brimming. "And did you have in mind another, better keeper for me?" he asked, wiping the tears away.
A gleam lit Sam's eye. "Well, now as you mention it—" He leaped from his chair and began rummaging through his desk.
"Here."
Just in time Frodo caught a small, heavy bag that made a dense clink as it landed in his cupped hands.
"Might come in useful," Sam winked, "if you should take a mind to getting wed."
"Sam!" Frodo felt the heat flood his face.
"I'm just saying."
"Indeed."
Sam shrugged. "Can't believe you haven't spoken by now."
"Really, Sam." Frodo looked away, hefting the bag of coins. He knew it was useless to attempt to refuse the gift. "Whatever makes you think—"
"You being redder than the roses in June, for one."
Frodo cast about, shaking his head. "I—really, Sam—I mean, we are friends, yes, but, well." He cleared his throat and shoved his free hand into his pocket. "See here, Sam. I really don't think that's what she wants—what you were saying, I mean, not being friends—what I mean to say is that Molly is quite happy as she is, and I—it really would not be right for me to, well—"
Sam's hand on his shoulder silenced him.
"To be happy?"
Frodo said nothing.
"Frodo." Sam's voice was tender. "You've borne your share of shadows, and then some. Don't you think maybe you're due for a little sunlight?"
Frodo sighed, closing his eyes. "I don't know Sam," he admitted. "I don't know." He looked up at Sam. "I suppose I've so got in the habit of writing myself a bitter end, I can't see any other, even when the story begs to be followed to a better."
"Ah, Frodo." In a heartbeat Sam's arms were around him. "You just wait and see. Someday you'll look back and laugh to think you saw naught but sorrow when bright blessed joy was just a-waiting round the bend. You wait and see if it ain't so."
Frodo smiled against Sam's broad shoulder. "I hope so," he said.
"Hope's a good start," Sam replied.