Firstly, bros. It has come to my attention, a few days before this chapter was submitted, that there is a story called 'The Burden', written by writer Nimwen. This story, I was troubled to find, echoed ideals very similar to my own. Please let it be known, whether you choose to believe or not, that I had no notion of this story before I began writing my own, and any uncanny coincidences are purely coincidental. I write of Tolkien's lands and characters not for a chance to gain glory or steal the words of others, but for my own love and for the hope that I can bring others a little joy.
This leads into another point I would like to discuss. Every day I try to learn a little more about the fine details of Middle-earth and its inhabitants, but as of yet I am no scholar. THERE WILL BE MISTAKES. Some will be intentional, for the sake of storytelling. Some will be unintentional, so, of course, I always appreciate the advice and critique of others. What I will not appreciate is what are known as 'flames', sharpy degratory reviews usually lacking in intelligent thought. If I ever offend you in my lack/misuse of Tolkienesque knowledge, it's no need to become upset. Simply let me know of the grievance, and I shall do what I can.
The Ringbearer
Chapter I: Fallen Embers
It began with a quicksilver glow etched into stone. It shimmered like stars over water, as the door slid into existence and gave them entrance to Moria, from where naught had been heard for countless years. The musty air bursting from its cracks, smelled of cobwebs and dust.
Gandalf the Grey lowered his strong, old, arms and his sleeves slid down and covered them. He shook his head, laughing softly to himself as he stroked his snowy beard.
"I knew my age was advancing; yes, to that much I will grudgingly admit; but I thought senility lay many years ahead. Gandalf, you old fool! Digging for deep secrets where the seeds of knowledge lay revealed on the topsoil."
Peregrin Took, a halfling, a hobbit, (creatures with tough, hairy, feet and bellies which never fill) stretched and yawned and stared at the glimmering door lamely. He touched the knee of the dozing companion next to him; his mischievous and inseparable cousin, Meriadoc Brandybuck.
"Wake up Merry. It turns out, all Gandalf needed to do is follow the directions. The door said, 'speak friend and enter.' So Mr. Frodo, after hours of Gandalf's crazed mutterings which you luckily slept through, suggested he say the elvish word for friend, seeing as the message was in elvish. I forgot what the word was, exactly. It worked! The door is open now."
Merry groaned and scratched his matted wheat curls, licking his dry lips. He thought sleepily of back home in the shire, where he would be feasting on steaming, butter-yellow, clovercakes and mugs of spiced cider, and would after lay down for a nice nap in his bed.
Gimli, a hearty and sturdy dwarf from the line of Gloin, huffed and shook his heavy head. "What were the elves thinking, thinking up riddles even they themselves couldn't solve!"
Legolas Greenleaf twitched alert like a mountain cat and eyed the dwarf carefully. "Those were easier times...," he said. "In these times we do not expect simplicity in our security, and so do not think to look for it. The elves and the dwarves were friends once..."
Gimli slumped beneath his armor, scratched his beard thoughtfully. "Aye, they were."
Frodo Baggins. Here was an unlucky and brave creature. On his neck hung the doom of the world, and he had already suffered much for it. He stroked the smooth, gold, ring between his fingers, as he did all the time now, without his own notice; and he observed his friends as they talked softly and stirred beneath the shadows of two enormous holly trees. Still against the tree's gnarled feet lay a sheet of dark water, stagnant and buzzing with flies at its trecherous shores. Frodo closed his eyes and wished, as he wished as often as a prayer, that the ring had never come to him.
At the edge of the gathering lingered Samwise Gamgee, Frodo's stoutest companion. He held the bridle of a jittery pony in one hand, and stroked its warm neck in the other. Sam's eyes were heavy and saturnine. A sadness had settled on him since their journey began. A sadness for himself, and for the world, and mostly for his master, who out of the whole world had been given a burden to much for a god to bear.
"Poor old Bill," he cooed to the pony. He fancied he could hear the howls of wolves in the far away dusk. "You cannot go into the mines, and you are probably lucky for it. Get out of here now, and mind you watch out for those 'oribble beasts. ALL of the 'oribble beasts, not just them wolves." He smacked the pony's rumpIt made a sound of disgruntled disbelief, and ambled away.
"Let's go on as soon as we can." Frodo announced, and he tried to sound encouraging, but his voice fell flat. No one grudged him that. Aragorn, son of Arathorn of a enigmatic line of ancient kings, put his hand on Frodo's shoulder and squeezed.
"Good work, Frodo. Unravelling the mysteries of elves and wizards and dwarves." He said, and caught Gandalf's twinkling eyes.
Boromir of Gondor nodded with vague kindness; but his cool, pale, eyes seemed to search Frodo to his marrow.
Gandalf stepped to the entrance, pushed back his tattered hat and peered inside. His sigh was thin, as if from lungs made of old parchment. "There is only blackness inside. I must risk a bit of magic."
His plain wooden staff leapt with silver fireat its thick head. For a second all was illuminated as if Elbereth, painter of the stars, tread before them; soon it cooled to a lambent light, ghost light. Dark, tumbled, shapes appeared inside the cavern, and hanging things. Aragorn slipped in after the wizard, slick as oil, and Gimli, Boromir, and Legolas.
"Wait!" Cried Merry, and he tugged on Pippin's sleeve and pointed to the odious lake. "What's that?"
The lake trembled with ripples, as if from raindrops none of them could see. In the center of the ripples began to froth green-white bubbles, and a rumble like the earth clearing its ancient throat grew under their feet. A tendril grey and hung with slime rose from the lake like a serpent.
Merry yelled and threw Pippin towards the door. "I told ya you should'na been throwin' rocks into it!"
The tendril shot up the bank like an arrow, and as Frodo passed his head through the crack of the door it caught his ankle and yanked him to the bank. He screamed and clawed the mud and felt rotted leaves and twigs and other things pass away under his dragging fingers.
"Mr. Frodo!" Sam yelled, and took a running dive to his master. He floundered in the mud but caught Frodo's hand. Frodo's face was smeared with the dark mud like a mask, and Sam could only see the terrified tempest of his watery eyes.
"Sam! Don't let go of me!"
"Frodo!" Aragorn sprang back outside with sword drawn. He held it like a lance as he charged, and pinned the tendril to the ground right below Frodo's struggling toes. A horrific hiss like water in a volcano thrashed the lake, and a creature boiled to the surface, from which whipped many tendrils, and its round black eyes at the center were furious.
Boromir and Legolas sprang to Aragorn's side. Their swords and daggers they waved clumsily, for the tendrils were faster than arrows and more sure. Legolas dodged the slimy ropes and scrabbled for an opening to the beasts eyes. Boromir lopped off a tendril at the half and nearly tripped over it. He spotted Sam dragging his Master to safety, but above them hovered another tendril, which came down upon them like a falcon. The shuddering rope had Frodo around his neck, and Sam's fingers slipped over it and could not find purchase.
"Aragorn!" Boromir shouted, and lurched towards the two. Aragorn wiped black ichor from his face and followed with a strangled war cry.
Boromir fought to his side, and they chopped and swung with sweat and blood blinding them. The hobbits were barred from their help, and they could not break through.
Legolas ducked under a snaking tendril and landed an arrow deep into the beast's eye! It sizzled and the thing screamed and reared up, and Frodo came with it, whipping upwards with a wet crack. Sam flew a few yards away and Gimli held him safe, crossing his heavy axe over the hobbit's chest. The whites in his eyes showed under his tangled brown brows.
It seemed then that the hope of the Fellowhip, of Middle-Earth, trembled at the edge of a black abyss. Caught in the mouths of halfling, man, dwarf and elf was the name of Frodo, a cry of many streams that met in a river of depthless despair. The holly trees shivered their leaves. The heavens thundered in shock.
Legolas drew a second arrow, panicking now, and shot again. He split the monster's skull, and a bolt chased the first and destroyed its other eye. The creature's scream died into a gurgle like caverns under the earth. Its flailing slowed, its body began a crashing descent back into the thick lake. The warriors struggled out from the water, hacking as they went. They could not see Frodo in the mess. The creature's head was gone, disappeared into the depths. Something heavy fell onto the wet sand.
Sam beat the ground with his fist, and wept. Gimli lowered his eyes slowly and let go of his axe. Sam crumpled forward. "No Mr. Frodo, no, it can't be! No no no no!"
The creature's grasp had not been kind. Frodo was a twisted and bruised thing. His neck had been broken, so that his face stared impossibly at something over his shoulder. Aragorn, with shaking hands, straigtened his body and his clothes on the shore, and closed his staring eyes. Inside Frodo's parted lips there was a poisonous blackness.
A darkness fell over them. Legolas looked towards the sky. It seethed with crows, ravens- crebain, spies and messengers of the dark wizard Saruman! They covered the murky sun. All at once they began a horrible chorus of caws, shrieks and scratchy laughs. Legolas slowly pulled an arrow from his quiver, knocked it and released it into the sky. It vanished amongst the legions. He pulled another arrow, wailed in anguish, and released it towards the winged wicked beasts. They opened to let they arrow through, and closed again like a curtain.
Merry and Pippin crept forward, kneeling at Frodo's side without breathing. Without daring to. They touched Aragorn's sleeve. "Not really Aragorn. He couldn't possibly be? No it's just not possible! Mr. Frodo, wake up! You just spoke to us moments ago, now speak again!"
"Little ones...Dear little ones. Go to dear Sam. Go now." Aragorn said.
Sam could not remember weeping more. He had sealed his eyes shut with grimy tears and was afraid to open them, for a world without his master surpassed every nightmare he had yet had in his short hobbit life, and he could not bear to face it. Merry and Pippin held him and cried against his shaking back.
Aragorn, as he smoothed the hobbit body into a restful place, heard a faint silvery jingle, akin to small coins. He pressed open Frodo's tattered waistcoat between the buttons, and saw a glimmer of mithril. He smiled slowly.
"Dear Frodo. You carried more than the shire's worth on your body and did not even know." In turn his fingers touched upon the hard knot under his vest, which was the ring. Aragorn could not bring himself to draw it out. It seemed as he felt it under his fingertips, he heard a whispery voice through his veins, laughing with triumph.
Gandalf had not moved since Frodo fell to the earth. Crouched in the entrance, he held his spotted hand clutched over his heart. In his face was the colorless horror of a creature who has seen his own doom played out before him. There were tears in his red, tired, eyes.
The Fellowship fell silent and still. The crebain passed in a black cloud, away, towards the west. A rain began to fall, heavy, dark drops that smelled like dampened smoke. It soaked their clothes and the lake swelled, and the fellowship pressed against the rocks in fear of the Watcher. In the battle, one holly tree had fallen to its side. Its roots stuck jagged into the air, hung with moss and crawling with white wormy insects. On the lip of the horizon, the lady of the stars held out her hands and beckoned the moon. It came fearfully, and all they could see through the smoky clouds was a milky, lurking, glow.
Aragorn roused himself when the deep night's chill bit his bones. He would not look at the others, still as statues around him. He passed into Moria, and kindled a fire inside. The orange light drew them slowly, one by one.
However, Legolas stayed still, remembering his arrow and the mad, pierced, eye. He went to Frodo. The hobbit lie on a flat bier of holly branches, which Aragorn had at some time carefully woven together. Legolas touched his moon-white face. Although no more did life burn in this body, the hobbit's skin seemed lit from within. Legolas, too, felt and then saw the mithril beneath his coat. The sun might have been snuffed out, such was the depth of his despair. For that instant he could not remember grass or nodding blooms under his feet, only stone and turgid water. He stroked Frodo's hair and sang:
Frodo of the under hill,
garbed in cloak of white mithril,
you passed through snow and grass and field,
the doom of the world, on your chest did wield.
Humblest creature, with farmer's feet,
Strongest heart, than in god shall beat;
You took the pierce from Morgul laid,
You struck in turn, courageous blade.
A poison to fell a thousand men,
you bore to bring your hope to them
Ah, Frodo, weary journeying one!
Always under shadow you lie,
And the world more swiftly passed you by.
And who will sing of Frodo's ring?
Before the courts and before the kings?
The trees of the Shire sigh in lament,
Ah Frodo, Frodo, wandering one,
where all these days, have you spent?
What head have we, to shadow now?
Under heavy branch and drooping bough?
We've heard no tales of rings and eyes,
of deathly things and black winged spies.
Frodo, Frodo, may your feet bring you home,
To sun and earth and gold ale foam.
"Doom is upon us then; so even thinks the elf," said Boromir, as he crept from the cavern of Moria, holding a torch.
"Doom has ever been upon us." Legolas said, and he stood to keep the man in his sight. Boromir snuck around him like a wolf.
"I can hear it in your every word. Like something painted over in a thin layer that does not cover," Boromir said.
"Why must you speak of such things now? Do the men of Gondor not learn respect for the dead? To speak of the evil which he bore for us, even over his body..."
There came suddenly a wet sound at the doorway, and Pippin stood in the gold light, wiping his eyes on his sleeve and staring out. Merry came to his side, touching his waist, and led him outside. They seemed to ignore the man and elf. Pippin wept without sound, and Merry kept his hand on his cousin's shoulder and made no movement at all. His face was blackly shadowed and lowered towards the ground. Sam came also, heavy-footed and puffy-faced, moaning under his breath and clenching his hands together.
Sam reached inside a pocket and pulled out a tiny wooden box, prettily carved into curling vines and flowers. Inside it, as only Sam knew, was salt from the Shire. His little piece of home. A home that would now seem desolate and empty, if e'er he returned. He pressed it under Frodo's still hands, and kissed them, and pressed their coldness to the hot of his tears.
"Oh Mr. Frodo..."
"We must bury him!" Merry suddenly cried, staring up at Boromir and Legolas. Legolas paced the ground and felt for solid earth. He began to dig, bent over, fingernails scraping up black dirt. Pippin and Merry joined him, and he left them to it, and began breaking off more branches of holly, finding the greenest of the waxy leaves, and fullest of their red berries. These he laid o'er Frodo's hands. Sam let out another pitiful round of tears. Legolas touched his hair and whispered a simple lullaby to him, and took his hands in his.
Sam sniffed and sucked his lip, and he unclipped Sting from Frodo's belt. "This will go back to M-Mr. Bilbo,"he said, and nodded to himself.
Merry and Pippin had finished the grave, and they stood, nearly swaying, by it. They found themselves in a crushing, wet, nightmare from which they could not wake up. Legolas carried Frodo to the gaping scar in the ground, and gently laid him down.
Pippin searched his clothes, and came out with a mushroom, its top as big as a man's fist. "I was going to eat this, but you can have it," he confessed to his still friend, and set it near the holly and salt. Merry scratched his dark hair and stamped with the bitter cold. He leaned over the hole, his face close to Frodo's.
"I have nothing to give you Frodo. Nor do I know what you could be in want of. But I do know, you were the best Bagginses I ever knew, and I ever will know. And I don't know what to do now that you're not here." He wiped his nose against his fist and moved away.
Aragorn stirred also from the mouth of Moria, and gave to Frodo a tied frond of athelas, and he crossed himself in a salute and bowed before the grave. Gimli took from his traveling pack a necklace of diamonds white and tiny as woodruff blooms, and they burned through the dark like stars. He laid it at Frodo's bruised throat. Gandalf gave to Frodo a tightly rolled scroll bound in red cord.
"A song, which Bilbo wrote and gave to me. He wrote it in a burst of great joy... the day he found out you had woken from your deadly sleep, in the houses of healing."
Boromir undid the broach holding his cloak, and pinned it to Frodo's shoulder, above the scar of the morgul blade. "Your deeds will be sung of for ages in the halls of Gondor," he pledged, and he turned his sharp eyes to Legolas, so that he felt as if he were being flayed with a knife.
"And there is yet one thing, which we must tend to, before he is given to the earth of this wretched place," Boromir pronounced, and his words were a little too quick. "The burden that Frodo wears, it must be passed on."
Aragorn gripped the hilt of his sword and stepped toward him. "It shall be passed on. But do not touch it, unless it be deemed your burden."
Boromir drew away slowly. Gandalf held his face in his hands, and would not raise his head. Boromir's fingers twitched, and every muscle trembled with energy. The rain came down heavier, and in great misty curtains now. His torch guttered, and the orange light from the entrance to Moria grew dimmer through the heavy night.
In the distance a song broke out, and at first it sounded like the said wail of a woman, but it turned into several voices, and then ended in the howls of wolves. An equine scream cut through their song, and their came the greedy sounds of feasting. Sam gasped and rocked back and forth, clutching his hem.
The lingering night would give forth no new ring bearer, and so as opalescent light began to graduate into the sky, Boromir reached towards the ring; but found it being drawn from under his fingertips like water. Legolas clasped the silver chain around his throat. He clutched the warm ring in his fist, for he was gripped by a great fear when he witnessed the craving of Boromir,and could not see the ring taken into his hands.
Aragorn touched Legolas' hand, and lowered his gaze in submission. The hobbits' eyes filled like goblets with their fearful admiration. Gimli muttered into his beard. Boromir was livid, white in the face and his fury only made him more terrifying. He stood to full height and began to say something, to step towards Legolas and reach, but the sword of Aragorn stopped him with its flat side.
Gandalf had raised his head, and Legolas looked upon him. The old wizard nodded, and sank down into himself again.
"I will bear the ring," said Legolas.
He thought he could hear shrill rejoicing, and the beating of black wings in the sky above, as Pippin threw a handful of black soil over the face of Frodo Baggins.
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I do not own anything of Tolkien's, I only like to play with them. )