Chapter 3

The Swing

The days turned into a week and Frodo continued to stop by Minderell's swing and waited for her to join him. Frodo feared that Farmer Maggot would suddenly appear with his dogs and meeting Minderell here felt safe and secure for him. The tree in which the swing hung was just on the edge of the Maggot's farm. It was the tallest tree upon their land with branches thick enough to support the ropes that held it. This was a special place for Minderell, a place where she could forget her blindness and her battles to maneuver and learn how to deal with what she could not see. Being here with Frodo gave them time to be alone with each other since there were so many in her family.

Frodo would bring her one of his many books from Brandy Hall and read to her the stories and songs that had occupied his earlier years growing up without his parents.

Dinodas, the brother of Primula, Frodo's mother, took Frodo into their residence and raised him as his own.

"Frodo, tell me of your mother and father?" Minderell asked him after hearing that he lived with his uncle. "How did they die?"

The pain immediately etched Frodo's face every time he would think about them. But for Minderell, that look was lost to her. Imagines of his parents came into his mind and he could clearly see his mother's soft and soothing face and the thick curls of her long, dark-brown hair. He could feel the safety of her arms that use to hold him. He could almost hear the tenderness of her voice that only his memories could now recall. Then to imagines of her still white-face that lye in death within a coffin. Frodo felt the cold, heat of pain that rendered his heart while all the buried emotions came to the surface. His throat seemed to tighten and he struggled trying to get any words out to tell her. Tears filled his eyes and he blinked desperately trying to contain them. Bottling his emotions he tried quickly to speak.

"In a boating…….," he choked upon his words and forced those imagines too painful to remember from his mind. "A boating accident," he slowly recovered.

His words were not lost to Minderell, while she caught the pain within them.

She reached her arms around him and pulled him into her embrace. Her arms that held him were like being in the arms of his mother and her words she gently spoke to him were the love that he had sought and they both came to together as one in the love that Minderrell gave to him. What Frodo tried to bury deep within his heart, exploded in deep retching sobbing in the comfort of her arms. For within her embrace was the love that Frodo had needed and that love opened the gates he barred and would never allow to surface.

"I love you, Frodo," she whispered softly to him while she stroked his hair to comfort him.

Her soft spoken words unexpectedly seemed to ease the deep pain and his heart that was so badly broken suddenly mended. The pain was finally gone. It was her love that healed him.

His lip quivered first and then slow tears began to fall from the corners that ran down the deep wrinkles of his face. Sam put Frodo's book down upon his chest and wiped his tears from his eyes. Lying there upon his bed, his memories took him back to the time when he was just a small lad when his mother suddenly died. It was Mr. Bilbo and Mr. Frodo that eased his pain. Frodo had always been there for Sam when he needed him the most and from that, Sam's loyalty to his master never wavered. Sam's eye again returned to this little book that now pocessed him.

Napus carried baskets of ground-up corn to feed the pigs and the chickens when he noticed Frodo and his sister exchanging a good-bye kiss with each other by her swing. He cast disapproving glance towards them and continued on to the barn.

He could hear Minderrell's sweet delicate voice singing an enchanting song while her arms swayed by her side making her way passed the barn and heading towards their home. Napus could clearly see the happiness that seemed to glow within her and he had a twinge of guilt from his distrust of Frodo.

Going into the chicken coop to feed the chickens, while they gathered all around him, Napus suddenly noticed her song had stopped almost in mid-sentence. Thinking this very odd, he turned around quickly to see that his sister was lying upon the ground mid-way from the barn to the house. He dropped the basket of feed upon the ground and ran from the chicken coop, calling out her name, "Minderrell!" he shouted.

Picking her up in his arms, he could see her ashen-white face and pale white lips. Napus called out to his brothers and scooped her up into his arms and carried her in their home. In the far distance, howls of barking echoed into the Marish.

Sam bolted straight up in his bed with his eyes wild and widened. "No!" he cried out loud. "Frodo can not lose Minderrell, too!"

Sam closed the book in his hands and grasped it tightly as to choke it. "You're a villain is what you are!" shouted Sam at this small book. "You give me no rest and you starve my stomach, and you cause my heart to hurting!"

Sam flung the book across the room and watched it bang loudly upon his wall. "You're no better than Gollum and I think I'd rather be walking beside him than the likes of you!"

Sam stood from his bed and began to pace in his room. His mind raced thinking about Frodo and what he was about to suffer yet again. No one deserved to suffer in life like his beloved master had suffered, while Sam's life was full of love, too much love from all of his thirteen children and more grandchildren than he could possibly recall. He had the love of his life with Rosie and shared such a happiness that completely filled his heart.

"It's not fair," Sam paced again. "He should have had my life and I'm the one who should have had his," he again shouted that this small book.

Sam closed his eyes and went back in his memory to the day he married Rosie and Frodo asking him to move into Bag End with him.

"Samwise Gamgee Gardner, you're such a fool!" he proclaimed, "You're a ninny-hammer and there's no getting away from it!"

Sam felt guilty for each time he caressed Rosie's hand while Frodo sat on the other side of the table eating his lunch and watching their playful gestures. How Frodo's heart must have broken each time Sam kissed his wife or held her and then remembering Minderrell and a life that he would never have. No wonder Frodo left for the Grey Havens. Then Sam began to remember Frodo's words after he told him he was leaving, 'There are some things that time can not mend. There are some hurts that go too deep that has taken hold.'

Sam sunk to his bed, sitting down and placed his head into his hands and began to weep for Frodo when those meanings from his words became clearer and Sam understood them more.

When his tears eased, Sam looked at the book lying upon his bedroom floor. He already knew that he would finish reading it. He felt he must, no matter how painful. Sam also remembered another thing that he had learned during his travels across middle-earth; 'There is always hope, even when there is no reasoning for it…'

Sam snatched the little book up abruptly and walked slowly back to his bed. He paged through the book to find his last page that he had read and to begin again from there.

Fearing what was written upon this page, Sam clung to his hope that somehow everything would be okay….

From the moment Frodo entered into the residence of his uncle, and greeted him, Dinodas saw a sparkle in his eyes that seemed to illuminate his entire spirit.

"Frodo, is there anything that you wish to tell me?" Dinodas asked him.

Smiling at his uncle, Frodo only shook his head, "No, uncle, why do you ask?"

"There is a look about you that is somehow different," he commented while he placed his hand upon Frodo's shoulder.

"I feel like I have been asleep for a very long time, and today, I feel like I have finally awaken," Frodo told him with a smile upon his lips that seemed to come from the very essence of him.

"Keep your secret if that is what you wish, but whatever has awoken you today, keep it close to your heart and never let it go," his uncle added and felt like a great weight had been lifted from him. He had longed for the day when Frodo would put his grief aside and find peace within him. When Frodo's parents died, a piece of Frodo died with them, a piece of him that Dinodas thought would never reemerge again.

Dinodas stood by and watched his nephew while he took an apple from the basket in their kitchen and headed down their short tunnel to his bedroom. There was a snap in Frodo's steps and a smile of pure delight to where it was infection and made Dinodas suddenly feel like giggling….

"Oh, the lad has to be in love," he snickered, saying it to himself out-loud.

Frodo put his half eaten apple upon his desk and walked over to his chest that belonged to his mother and he opened it carefully.

Inside the chest were many of Primula's things that Frodo could not or would not let go of. Her wedding dress carefully preserved and wrapped in tissue paper, her knitted shawl that she wore to keep herself warm in the evenings. Frodo's hands gently caressed it and remembered how she use to wrap him into it, while he was sit upon his mother's lap, when he was a very young child. These memories use to make Frodo cry from missing her so much. However, today, Frodo smiled with these precious memories of his mother.

Yes, Frodo was in love and for the first time in his life, he had a dream for his future. Finding the small little box carefully tucked away in the far corner of the chest, he took it out and opened it. There sitting inside the box was his mother's and his father's wedding rings. He picked up his mother's ring first to examine it and his mind began to picture his life with Minderrell. He saw his wedding day, standing in the great hall surrounded by hundreds of flowers from the grand garden of Brandy Hall. There would be hundreds of Brandybucks gathered around him, from his closes cousins, uncles, aunts, and distant relatives. He imagined his Uncle Bilbo standing by his side congratulating him and he could see Minderrell, her beautiful face and her long, dark-brown hair tied with an array of flowers. He could see her standing there in a wedding dress, white and lacey, holding in her delicate hands a bouquet of wedding flowers. He could feel in his heart a happiness that was beyond anything that he had ever felt before.

Yes, tomorrow, Frodo would fall on one knee and ask her to be his wife.

Frodo placed the small ring upon his finger and he went in search for his best vest that he would wear tomorrow and placed the ring into the pocket.

Tomorrow, his life would be changed forever……..

Mrs. Maggot boiled a big pot of water upon her stove and waited for her husband to join her in the kitchen.

Hearing his familiar foot steps, she turned to see him pulling his handkerchief from his pocket with something tied into it.

"See'n what ya got there, ya musta found him in the 'O Forest," Mrs. Maggot pointed out.

"Grip found him first and led me to him," commented Farmer Maggot. "He was in his voice singing as he does. He's known to walk with very quick steps and it's weary in follow'n, as it were."

"Ya had words with him, did ya not?" Mrs. Maggot asked of her husband.

"Yes, we spoke and he gave me these 'ere mushrooms to the likes that I've never seen afore," Farmer Maggot told her. He opened his handkerchief and showed his wife Tom Bombadil's mushrooms.

"Oh, there queer look'n to say the least," she mentioned.

"There not fer eat'n, mother, there fer medicine for Minderrell," he told her. "Old Tom Bombadil says 'is 'ere will cure her. First, she'll sleep fer a time and then when she wakes, her illness will pass."

Farmer Maggot took out his knife and began to chop the mushroom into pieces. Taking a stone, he crushed them until they were a finely pressed. He asked his wife for a cup of boiling water and he added the pressed mushrooms into the cup. Waiting until it cooled, he took a spoon and went into Minderrell's bedroom.

Napus and his brothers moved from her bedside when he saw his Da coming in with the medicine for Minderrell.

"Send yer brothers to the fields and harvest the turnips, take wolf and Fang with you, but have Grip stay upon the porch," Farmer Maggot ordered his sons.

"I'll stay with Minderrell to watch her through the night," Napus asked his father.

"So be it," said Farmer Maggot and sat down upon the bed next to his daughter. Lifting her weak form from her pillow, she barely had enough strength to swallow the medicine that her father spooned in her mouth. Before she even finished it, she fell into a deep sleep. Tucking her into the bed, Farmer Maggot ushered everyone from the bedroom and only allowed Napus to stay and watch her.

"Keep closes eyes upon her and wake me if need be," he told his son and walked out of her room. He left her door open so he could hear if he was to be called in the middle of the night.

The hours pasted while Napus sat in the chair reading from one of his books and from time to time, he would go over to see if Minderrell was still sleeping. His eyes became heavy with the need of sleep. Sitting back into his chair, he thought to close them for just a few minutes. After all, Minderrell was sleeping well and he doubted that she would be waking up at all this night.

It was almost dawn when Minderrell's eyes gradually began to open. Still in a great fog of mind from the mushrooms her father gave her, she sat up in her bed. First a dark shadow with bits of light began to create imagines from her eyes and then slowly the light began to increase and she could almost make out the candle that burnt upon the table by her bed. Blinking her eyes tightly to clear the fogginess, she tried to focus her vision, but still she could not make out anything definite, nor did she see her brother that was sleeping in the chair. She rose from her bed upon wobbly legs and steadied herself against the wall. She saw a light that seemed to glow in the distance and she walked towards it, heading out of her room. Standing in darkness and bits of light, she thought she could hear someone singing in the far distance and she strained her ears trying to listen.

She walked towards the enchanting tones that played in her mind. Frodo's voice seemed to be calling her and in her fogginess of mind, she followed the voice she thought was his.

Out the front door her wobbly legs led her. Grip lifted his head from his paws and watched her for a moment before returning back to his slumber knowing the hobbit that he saw.

She walked into the darkness of the night following the song that she thought Frodo was singing.

Soon, her hands touched the tree and she could hear the rushing of water from the creek in front of her. Then an image of light seemed to rise in front of her, beckoning her to come closer to it. Minderrell sensed it was Frodo and waded into the water and held her arms open for him to carry her, just like he did when he taught her to swim.

An abrupt rush of icy-cold darkness took her and suddenly the air was gone that she breathed and she fell into a blackness that she could not awaken from.

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A/N: Thank you to all who are reading this story, your review would be very welcomed and helps me in writing this little story. I know that I am leaving you at a very bad spot, and a lot of your questions will be answered later on in the upcoming chapters, and I promise you it will all make sense in the end…..(Gosh, I hope so anyway)…