Chapter 2: Day Three at Sea: Dreams
Dreams. Ah. He had always experienced peculiar dreams. Dreams unlike other hobbits' dreams. Dreams of places he had never been. Objects he had never seen. Strange, foreign sounds and smells. People he had never met, yet who seemed to know him. Actions he had never witnessed, yet accepted as real.
The dreams started when he was young and still living with his Brandybuck relations at Brandy Hall. Once he tried to share a particularly strange and somewhat frightening dream with Aunt Esmeralda.
"Gracious, you silly Baggins," Auntie Esme frowned. "Elves talking to you in the middle of the night? And calling you Elf-friend?"
"That's right, Auntie Esme," the youngster said. "They were speaking in Elvish too. And I could understand them!"
"Gracious me," she rolled her eyes. "No self-respecting hobbit speaks Elvish."
"Uncle Bilbo does," Frodo defiantly replied, crossing his small arms.
Esmeralda pinched his ear. "Frodo Baggins! You will not take that tone of voice with me, fauntling!" She shook him slightly by the ear.
"Ow!"
"Now you listen to me, Frodo," Esmeralda released him but shook her finger under his nose. "Your Uncle Bilbo Baggins is not the sort of person we want you admiring, even if he is filthy rich with gold. He's from Hobbiton and everyone knows folk 'round Hobbiton are a bit queer. You're mostly Brandybuck and while you are here in the Hall under my care, you will conduct yourself like a Brandybuck!"
"But you're from near Hobbiton, Auntie Esme," Frodo stammered in confusion. "I read our family trees in one of the books in the library. Aren't we both related to Uncle Bilbo?"
"Frodo, I swear, you read too many books. Book learning is well and good for some, but not for the likes of one so impressionable as you. Don't know why your poor mother insisted you learn letters in the first place. Book learning is dangerous business best left to those that know better." The hobbitess snorted. "Now let me set you straight. I am the daughter of the Thain from Tookland and married to the son of the Master of the Hall. And you…" she pointed at him, "…are related to me by both blood and marriage. I am your guardian and you WILL do as I say, and without any back talk."
"Yes ma'am," Frodo murmured, looking at the rug.
"I don't want to hear any more nonsense about dreams or Elves or dragons or whatnot," she lectured. "I don't care to hear you mention Bilbo Baggins and I certainly don't want you reading any more of his stupid adventurous fables and scandalous tall tales. Do you understand me, Frodo?" she asked.
"Yes ma'am,' he replied.
"Good. Now go get dressed and over to Mr. Shortdigs's place. You're going to be late already. You've already missed first breakfast."
Frodo could hear her muttering as he returned to his room to prepare himself for a day's work at Mr. Shortdig's studio. He hated his current job of whittling buttons from deer antlers. He would have much preferred to spend the day in the cool library, or out with one of the other children in the fields surrounding the Hall. But Aunt Esme was determined he learn a proper respectable trade.
"Don't know why we have a copy of that stupid book in the library anyway," Esmeralda muttered as she walked away. "Frightens the children and puts nonsense in their heads. Dreaming he could talk to Elves… Humph…."
That was when he started his journal. A place to keep his dreams. Write them down just in case they meant something. Ironically, he got the idea from his Uncle Bilbo. After all, Bilbo Baggins had written down his adventures. Why not Frodo Baggins? That was how it began.
He thought it would be different when he finally moved in with his beloved Uncle Bilbo at Bag End. Frodo tried to share his strange dreams with his closest friends; Merry, Folco, Fatty and Sam. But Frodo stopped telling the dreams to his hobbit acquaintances after too many rolled eyes and sly 'queer Baggins' nods of the head when they went to the Green Dragon or the Ivy Bush.
Bilbo encouraged him to continue to record the dreams in his journal. But Frodo was somehow reluctant to fully share the dreams with his Uncle. Some nagging doubt always caused him to close his mouth whenever Bilbo asked for more details.
'Probably some old left-over notion of making Auntie Esme mad,' Frodo thought to himself. But he never shared the dreams with anyone ever again. Anyone, except Sam. Sam never laughed or made fun of him. The young gardener was keenly interested in anything to do with Elves, even if it was just queer young Master Frodo's dreams.
The dreams had proven true, as Frodo found out later. The most memorable dreams, the ones he privately called the 'important ones,' had come true either during the Quest, or now. Now that he was on the grey swan ship sailing to Tol Eressea.
Last month the Sea sounded and appeared exactly as he had dreamed it some twenty years prior. The grey tower on a hill overlooking a harbor; it was the Grey Havens down to the stonework, quays, and ropes. He had become somewhat nonplussed at seeing his premonitions shimmer into reality at the turn of a corner or under the light of a new moon. But the smell of the Sea and the glimmer of the White Elvish Towers in the clear starlight had rekindled his uneasiness at his peculiar dreams.
They were three days at sea. And now he experienced nightmares every time he closed his eyes in slumber.
Frodo was afraid of one in particular that had yet to be fulfilled. He could not tell if this was one of those 'important ones,' as in old, or one of the new nightmares of reliving events from the Quest. It had elements of both.
'Perhaps I should tell Gandalf about this dream,' he wondered after seeing the Wizard above decks comfortably seated on a polished wooden deck chair with a pearly blue blanket wrapped about his outstretched legs. The great white horse, Shadowfax, stood nearby, contentedly munching hay. The Wizard was asleep.
'Or maybe Lord Elrond could help me, since he is also gifted with foresight,' Frodo mused. The tall, dark-haired Elf-lord stood back near the helmsman observing a complicated-looking nautical instrument set inside a bowl of water. 'Gifted, or perhaps it is cursed with foresight. I best not bring that up.'
Frodo seated himself alone amongst the coils of silky rope stored on deck in the forecastle. The only person he had ever trusted with his dreams was Sam, and now Sam was left behind.
Frodo sighed and smiled slightly. Sam would be finding it right about now. Now that he was safe home back in Bag End and was going through the contents of Frodo's desk in the study. Frodo had left it with Rosie before he and Sam had made the final journey to the Grey Havens. Rose promised she would place it on Frodo's desk for Sam to find.
His dream journal. It even included this last troubling dream. Sam would find the right places to insert all the dreams inside the Red Book. Sam was going to finish the Red Book, and add his part to the tale as well.
Frodo smiled. Let the dreams come. They were safe with Sam now.