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Expect another chapter of "Shire" next, as long as ffnet cooperates.

O-O-O

Chapter 63. Breaking the News

As Freddy entered the bedroom, teapot in hand, Frodo said cheerily, 'I was beginning to think you'd gone out to pick the tea leaves by hand!'

'I had to dig another well and haul water up the hill into the bargain,' Freddy said, but his heart wasn't in it. Silently he poured fresh tea into Frodo's cup and added milk and sugar.

'Have you threshed the wheat yet, for the bread? Or is it that you have not yet milked the cow and churned the butter?' Frodo asked lightly.

'My most ancient and venerable cousin!' Freddy said in chagrin. 'Your bread-and-butter slipped my mind completely. I must be growing as old and senile as you!' He jumped up from his chair and hurried from the room, but once in the hallway he stopped and leaned his forehead against the smooth, curved wall.

Viola saw him there as she crossed from the dry sink to the table. 'Budgie,' she said softly.

Her husband rose instantly from his chair, turning to catch sight of Freddy just outside the kitchen. He hurried to take Freddy's arm. 'Come, sit down,' he urged.

Freddy straightened, wiping at his eyes. 'I am well,' he said. 'I forgot; my cousin wanted some bread-and-butter to go with his tea.'

'Do you want me to—' Budgie began, but Freddy shook him off.

'No,' he said. 'It's just that—no, Budgie, I'll tell him. I can do that much. I hadn't the courage to go with him from the Shire, when every stranger's hand was against him and only two young cousins and a gardener followed, but I can do this little thing for him, at least. It's my place to tell him; I'm his cousin after all.'

As they talked, Viola cut slices of bread and buttered them, arranging them attractively on a flowered plate with a little pot of honey and another of her own raspberry jam. She held the plate out to Freddy with a sympathetic smile. 'Bread-and-jam,' she said simply. 'Enough for the both of you, and I'll stir up some nice currant scones and bring them to you hot out of the oven, in a bit.'

'Thank you, Viola,' Freddy said, taking the plate. As he exited the kitchen, Budgie sat down again with a sigh.

Entering the bedroom, Freddy held out the plate with a flourish. 'Your bread-and-butter, sir!'

'Indeed,' Frodo said. 'More than I asked for—honey and jam besides.' He took the plate and spooned some jam onto a slice of bread, took a bite and closed his eyes. 'Mmmm,' he said. 'Tastes just like what my mother used to make.'

'How can you remember that far back?' Freddy asked. 'It's nigh on an hundred years ago!'

'I can see why Rudivacar's taken over the Quarry and the mines,' Frodo said, his eyes still closed. 'You really need to brush up on your calculating, cousin, it's only been half that long.' He opened his eyes and smiled. 'Do help me out here, Freddy,' he said. 'There's enough to feed an army!'

Freddy drizzled honey over a piece of buttered bread. It made a nice accompaniment to the cup of tea Frodo poured for him. They sat companionably, as if it were any other day of an ordinary visit, instead of the day when Freddy would have to break the news to Frodo that... He shied from the thought. A few moments more, what would be the harm in that?

Frodo was the first to broach the subject. 'Something's on your mind, Freddy.'

'You noticed,' Freddy said.

'How could I help noticing? You've a face as long as a rainy day,' Frodo said. 'Not that a little rain wouldn't be welcome, to break this heat spell we're having.'

'Frodo, there's something I have to tell you,' Freddy said. 'Budgie says—' He swallowed hard, unable to force the words past the lump in his throat.

'I'm dying, yes, I know,' Frodo said quietly, meeting his eyes with a steady gaze.

'You know?' Freddy said, dumbfounded. 'How?'

'Freddy,' Frodo chided gently. 'You don't think I'd noticed that my walks grow shorter each day—for I haven't the breath to go as far, nor as fast as I used to just a few short months ago?'

'But—' Freddy said.

'I'm not sure quite what the problem is, but each morning when I arise I've lost a little more ground.'

'You're not sure—you never went to a healer?'

Frodo spread his hands, cup in one and bread in the other. 'What would a healer tell me that I don't already know?'

'They might—they might have some medicine, some potion—' Freddy countered, but Frodo shook his head with a smile.

'Healer's potions aren't magical, Freddy,' he said. 'If they were then nobody'd die now, would they? Hobbits would live as long as the Elves do.' He took another bite of bread and set it back down on the plate, and then sipped at his tea. 'O I was upset at first when I realised, even railed a bit against my fate. Why now, when the Shire is saved and I've my whole life ahead of me?'

Freddy was silent, and Frodo continued after another sip. 'But the memories are so dark, Freddy, and they are always there. I think they're growing stronger as I grow weaker. The jewel—' he fingered Arwen's gift, '—the jewel is becoming less effective, or else it's just that I'm less able to fight.'

'Frodo,' Freddy breathed, grieved. 'I'd no idea... was it the writing?' Had he helped his cousin sow the seeds of his own destruction?

Frodo put down his empty teacup, reached out to take his younger cousin's hand. 'No,' he said. 'Not at all. If anything, the writing helped. I was able to clarify my thoughts, to know that there really was no other course to take than the one set before us. I thought at first that I'd failed— To claim the Ring for my own, what a fool I was! I was mad, Freddy, driven mad by that Thing and I had no power to resist at the end.'

'Frodo,' Freddy said again, but his cousin squeezed his hand and continued.

'But I see now,' Frodo said, 'that I did all I was meant to do. I was meant to bring the Ring to the Fire, and that was enough. The same Power that brought the Thing to Deagol in the Anduin, to Smeagol through murder and greed, to Bilbo by "chance"—hah!' He uttered a sharp bark of laughter. '—and then to my hand, by inheritance, mine, the only hand perhaps that could resist claiming the Thing for the time it took to make the journey, something none of the Wise was willing to attempt. That Power arranged for the Ring to go into the Fire.'

'Power?' Freddy said, his mind feeling too small to surround this idea and take it in.

'Call it what you will,' Frodo said. 'D'you know, when we were there in that terrible Land, Sam spoke about asking the Lady "just for a bit of water and light".'

'I remember,' Freddy said. 'It was in the papers I sent back to you in April or May, I think.'

'We got our water, and our light, though there was no hope in us. How did that come to be? Did the Lady hear us somehow, and look upon us with pity in her heart?' Frodo said.

Freddy saw that he didn't expect an answer, he was musing aloud.

The elder cousin sat up straighter, smiling again. 'In any event, the writing helped,' he said matter-of-factly.

'I'm glad of that,' Freddy said softly. 'How long, then? How long have you known?'

'I never quite felt right after that bad spell in October,' Frodo answered. 'I tried to pass it off as the winter gloom, you know how you feel when the Sun hides her face for days on end, and the nights are so long and dark... but when Spring came, I felt no better. Somehow, I knew after that bad spell in March that my days were numbered. I've been watching myself go downhill ever since. Starting in March, I could not walk as far as I had the previous Spring, and my walks have decreased steadily ever since.'

'You still walk,' Freddy said.

'Of course, every day,' Frodo replied. 'Sam would be alarmed if I didn't.'

'Sam...' Freddy said. 'You mean, Sam doesn't know?'

'I hope not,' Frodo said.

Freddy tried to speak calmly and reasonably. 'You've known you were dying, and been keeping the news from those who are closest to you?' He thought of Merry and Pippin's frequent visits, and Sam's devotion to his master—Sam...

'I didn't want to worry Sam, what with the new babe and all—' Frodo began.

Freddy found himself shaking in his perturbation, but he tried to cover his weakness by saying ironically, 'Don't you think Sam might notice, Frodo, when he finds you dead on the study floor?' He tried to take a deep breath, feeling a warning pain in his breast. 'Whom are you protecting with your silence, cousin, Sam — or yourself?' He fumbled to place his teacup back on its saucer, only to knock cup and saucer both to the floor, where they missed the soft carpet, of course, and shattered.

In the kitchen Budgie put down his teacup at the crash and rose abruptly. 'That doesn't sound good,' he said. Viola nodded and took down the bottle from the high shelf as her husband hurried from the room.

Entering the guest room the healer found Freddy stiff and white, breathing in gasps, while Frodo had started up from the bed in distress. 'Freddy, Freddy—cousin, steady now!'

Circling Freddy's wrist with his fingers, Budgie eyed the older hobbit sternly. 'Back in the bed,' he ordered. 'I don't need the both of you falling on your faces at the same time. What mischief is this?'

Frodo had no answer as Viola bustled into the room with a glass. 'Come, Freddy,' she soothed. 'Drink up now. You know you oughtn't to let yourself get worked up this way!'

Freddy drank while Budgie encouraged him to steady his breathing, keeping his hand about Freddy's wrist the entire time, until he finally sat back with a sigh. 'Freddy,' he said, shaking his head. 'I ought to pop you into bed this moment.'

'No,' Frodo said unexpectedly. 'No, we're not quite finished with our business yet.'

'You've nearly finished your cousin, Mr Baggins,' Budgie said severely, but Freddy blinked and looked up.

'If you please, Budgie,' he said mildly, though it took him an effort to speak so. 'I promise to be good. Evidently Frodo has as much to say to me as I had to say to him, earlier.'