Warning: chapter contains child death and still births, along with a whole bunch of other craziness.
The Twins
F.O. 02
Rose Gamgee had always wanted a big family. It was what she had grown up in, it was all she had known, and now that she and Sam were so far away from everything else they had ever known, it was a nice thought to take comfort in.
So, with all that in mind, you would think that her second pregnancy would be a happy event, and indeed when the couple had first discovered it, it was. Yet, while Elanor's pregnancy had been almost ridiculously easy – seriously there hadn't even been morning sickness – this pregnancy seemed to drain every ounce of goodwill out of the prospective mother. Everything hurt, every smell made her sick, every excited look or comment from Samwise made her want to strangle him and everything was far too bright. She felt too dizzy to walk most days, so had been confined to her and Sam's bedchamber.
And the cravings, oh sweet Mother Magda, the cravings. They were strange and bizarre: bananas (a fruit her pallet had only recently discovered) drenched in apple cider and olive oil; roasted duck and pelican, lembas (a food she had only heard of in her husband's tales), wine and pearls from under the sea. All strange food she would never have been drawn to in regular circumstances, but the truly awful thing about every one of these cravings, was when the servants or Sam had finally managed to find them– even if it only took a few minutes – she never wanted them anymore. All that food gone to waste, there were people starving in this world and she was making them throw out food just because she just had to have those strange concoctions.
What seemed to make it worse was just how kind and excited everyone in the palace was. Babies and children were treasured in these parts – it was that way in all hobbit societies, for there had been times of great famine and tragedy in their past that had nearly wiped their kind from existence. If it had not been for a population boom after each of those tragedies, it very well may have. There was even some talk, after the tragedy of Michel Delving, of making it law for families to have at least three children. But in the end, it was dropped, because quite frankly hobbits needed no law to enforce reproduction.
The same attitude resided in this great golden city of splendour, it was simply magnified. While prospective hobbit mothers were always showered with gifts and praise alike, the sheer level of wealth accumulated in the House of the Turtle Fish magnified that generous spirit, till it was almost a farce. Upon her declaration that she was indeed pregnant, the king himself – who in the past seemed only to have eyes for Samwise – presented her with a necklace of blue diamonds. Of course, he had combined it with the gift of a ruby earring for her husband, but at this point that was only to be expected.
As bad as she had felt, and as uncomfortable as all this wealth made her, it was nothing compared with the birth. So much blood… so much blood everywhere. Her waters had burst in the throne room and she had been bundled into the royal birth chamber itself as she went into labour. But that labour had lasted more than a week, and there had been so much blood. The healers had thought there had been something wrong, that something had been wrong with one if not both of the babies. Years later, after everything that would happen, all the lives that would be lost, she wasn't so sure they had been wrong.
Still right now they were just her little babies, just her little Frodo and Marigold and their lights were so bright that they hurt her eyes.
The Garden Rose
F.O. 04
Two years, that was how long it took for Hamson to come get them. That was how long Sam, her and their kids had to wait in that palace. Still things could always have been worse, the king was a kind Hobbit, and he was in all respects a good host who had never left them wanting for anything.
Yet she couldn't deny that she felt far more at home in this simple – alright still fairly grand as far as Hobbit holes went but by no means a palace – homestead. Samwise of course still had to commute to and from the palace to speak with the king and his cohorts, but Rosie and their children were left thankfully alone. That was good, the girls seemed to have been unaffected by the grandeur of palace life, but it had been hard to keep Frodo-lad from becoming spoiled. He had thrown quite the fit when he'd been told they would be leaving soon. Sam had at last managed to pry the screaming toddler away from around the King's leg, but there had still been quite a fight just getting him into the carriage, and he had not taken to any of his new cousins well. Really at this point the only people he would interact with without trying to throw something at their heads, was Marigold and Elanor. And even then, only because they didn't seem to care.
Still despite Frodo's tantrums, and Hamson's cowardice, Rosie was enjoying herself. She had really connected with Hamson's wife, Xiang Ji. She had forgotten how good it was to have another lass she could talk to, to have someone who understood what she was going through. Since Marigold had well…since the Scouring of the Shire, she'd become used to her only female companions being the bitchy housewives from around Hobbiton. Many of whom either sniped about her husband's low birth or made crude comments about his rear end. Xiang Ji was married to Sam's brother, which made her and Rosie practically sisters, a fact that both wives who had never had a particularly close relationship with their biological sisters, found rather bemusing.
So, all in all, the homestead of Hamson and Ji was a good place for her and Sam to be. And an even better place for their fourth child to come into the world. Rosie had not known she was pregnant again when they'd bundled their screaming children up into that carriage of gold. Yet she'd never been happier to have been taken by surprise. It wasn't just Samwise who was giddy this time round, this was a far easier pregnancy than her last one, why she hadn't had such an easy time since she'd carried Elanor. And even then, she'd had to battle the subtle barbs of the wives of Hobbiton who didn't think the Gamgees were well-bred enough to associate with them on an equal footing.
After all they were a family of Ganymen, and there was even that rumour that circled round the teashops of upper Hobbiton every so often, that one of Samwise's parents had been conceived out of wedlock. Preposterous of course, but then again rumours didn't have to be realistic to ignite interest. It was better they were away from that, better the children didn't have to grow up like she and Sam had, it was better they grew up in a place far away from that. And they would, this child would, this child that would be born in the rose gardens she and Ji had planted during their pregnancies. For Ji had begun to swell with child as well.
It had been nice, to share this experience with Xiang Ji, nice to know she wasn't the only one that could no longer stomach the backed muscles that seemed to be a particular delicacy of the East.
They'd gone into labour at the exact same time, their contractions had been synchrenized and even the heads of their babies had crowned in harmony. But there was something different, something entirely different about the children that came after. Ji's son, named Han later on, was a happy normal child, with the look of his mother's people about his tiny pudgy face. Rosie's daughter though, well she was a bright burning light when her mother looked at her, it hurt her eyes sometimes. A wavering creature made of light and the eyes of an elf that, of course, like all her children, it seemed that only Rosie could see this. Well Rosie and Samwise – but seeing as he sometimes faded into nothing but light as well when his wife looked upon him – he really didn't count.
Yet when that terrifying light faded away, as it had always done with the others, and she could see her daughter in full for the first time, she was taken aback by her babe's beauty. A red strand of hair, the same shade as her own, fell across the infant's tiny brow, and her daughter's cheeks were as rosy as the flowers that the surrounded the two mothers.
'Rose, my little Rose.'
Glass
F.O. 05
The next pregnancy was not easy; it was not easy at all. In fact, until the official healer the King had sent over to check her symptoms confirmed it, she was more convinced she had an allergic reaction to one of the dishes the Xiang family had served at their eldest son's wedding last month. She was astounded to learn she was pregnant again, because quite frankly – despite her morning sickness, and the bouts of dizziness – she did not feel as she had done in her earlier pregnancies.
She felt strange, as if every movement was a challenge, and that her body was slowly becoming stone. Of course, it wasn't, she was as flesh and blood as she had always been, but still she just could not shake that feeling that something, something big, was terribly wrong here. Sam and Ji had tried to help with this fear, but as they had never felt themselves turning to stone before, they could really offer little insight into why she was feeling like this. She didn't know herself, that is, until she went into labour.
The labour had been the most painful of her life, even worse than Marigold and Frodo's birth, at least she had felt like she was pushing out a baby of blood and flesh then. Now, no this child felt more like she was giving birth to a large stone. She didn't let herself think too deeply on that, at least not while she was still in labour. She focused instead on the pain that was raking up and down her body as the midwives coaxed her to push just a little bit more. She ignored everything else. She ignored their gasps, then their too friendly, too reassuring voices telling her that 'everything was fine' and to push just a little bit more. She ignored the sound of the youngest midwife fleeing the room to be sick in the nearby privy, yes, she ignored everything until the first sound of her baby's strange high pitch crying.
They tried to hide him from her at first, but Rose Gamgee nee Cotton was no simple maid from Little Delving or New Bottle, she was a Cotton and she was a Gamgee and she knew when something was wrong. When she'd demanded it, in the voice she had not used since the time of Sharkey, they handed her the tiny wrapped bundle, and settling it in her arms she removed the folds of the blanket away from his face and pointedly did not gasp.
For her son was not made of flesh at all but a finely made sheen of glass. Her son, the child she had given birth to, was made of glass. She rubbed the back of her hand against his face, and she felt the cold strength of it beneath her knuckles. He was of glass, a living doll forced into a life that should have never been. Yet no one had told her son this, for he fidgeted and fussed as any infant would have done and she decided then and there that she did not care what his body was made of, he was her son. So, unfastening the front of her night gown, she brought him to her breast.
Sam and Rosie loved their son, as they loved all their children, but others it would seem had more trouble accepting him. Ji smiled and cooed over the baby, but there was a sadness in her eyes when she looked at Rosie afterwards, that the hobbit mother did not care for. Many of the Xiang relatives still left over from the wedding last month, reeled back on sight of the babe and tried to shield their own children from it. That caused several arguments and even scuffles between the brothers of the Xiang clan and Sam. Eventually the situation grew so bad that Rosie and Sam were nearly ready to pack up and leave, and might have done just that, if it hadn't been for the giggle. The giggle that had come out of her son's mouth when Hamson Gamgee had picked him up for the first time. Hamson had never held any of their other children, not being particularly skilled at soothing wailing infants, but he had picked up this one.
Rosie stood in the doorway of the nursery, as Hamson stood over the crib with her son in his arms.
'Look at that,' he looked up and smiled a large warm, almost child-like, smile at Rosie.
'I did that, I made him laugh,' he looked down again. 'No one else thinks I'm funny, do they big fellow?' he cooed at the giggling infant. 'But I see you have better taste.'
And Rosie was overcome with a sudden warmth and affection for her brother-in-law, where before she had only felt a slow burning resentment.
'Do you have a name yet?'
She'd have to run it by Sam of course, but she had a feeling he wouldn't mind.
'Hamson, his name is Hamson.'
The Goldfish
F.O. 06
It was hard to gauge the amount of love young Frodo-Lad held for his siblings. On the one hand no one seemed more important to him than his sisters; on the other if any of them wanted to play with one of their cousins instead of their loud and slightly domineering brother, they got a sharp pull to the hair and a face full of mud for their troubles. Yet there was no doubt in anyone's minds what he felt about his little brother; it was quite a disturbing sight after all, to see hate written so clearly across a child's face.
From the second he was first denied an opportunity to hold the babe, the Fauntling had seemed to make it his personal mission in life to make sure that his baby brother never got one iota of happiness. He would sneer at Wee Hamson, bang doors when the baby had just drifted off to sleep and who could forget that wonderful child-like night when Sam had caught the boy trying to smother his brother with a pillow.
'He's not real!' The boy would scream, from behind the bolted lock of his room. 'He's not a real boy, he's not a real baby, he's just a doll, a glass doll that you should have smashed by now.'
This violent hatred worried his parents, especially considering Rosie once again swelled with child. They even considered sending Frodo away, it was not something they relished, but Wee Hamson's condition already made him a risk for injury, Frodo's temper would only put their other son in even greater danger.
But that had only been a vague notion, and one that neither parent particularly wanted to have to entertain in the first place, when Rosie went into labour. In comparison to her other labours this one went relatively smoothly and soon Merry Gamgee was taking his first breath. This new little brother seemed to be a miracle, for he snapped Frodo's attention away from Hamson's gleaming, reflective face and onto his own small, red, pudgy one.
The young boy was heard crowing to all hours of the night, on how he loved his new little brother and how much better he was than the last one. Alright so Merry's birth didn't fix every problem, but the point was Frodo was now too preoccupied with the new babe to pose much of a threat to the old one. Thus, life could go on with peace and prosperity between the family. Or at least it should have, after all Frodo clearly posed no threat anymore, so who else would be so heartless as to go after a one-year-old?
No one as it turned out, no one would be the cause of Hamson's…well it was hard to call it a demise really. One second he was happily bouncing on his Namesake's knee, and then the other he'd gone completely still. They'd tried to jiggle him awake, but it was no use, for Hamson was not asleep, he was still, and he was cold like the glass he had been carved from. He no longer breathed, for he was no longer a living, breathing child anymore but now nothing more than a glass doll.
Rosie screamed, and the doll shattered into a hundred pieces, and all around them was pandemonium. But none of this seemed to touch young Frodo-lad, who sat quietly on the floor, staring down at the new baby, at his new brother as if the other one had never even existed at all.
The Triplets
F.O. 08
'I don't want another sister!'
Frodo cried much to the charging of his current sisters, as Rosie closed her eyes against the insistent whine of her eldest son. It had been almost two years since…since Hamson, but it still felt like a sharp slap to the face when she even thought his name. It had taken at least a year for Sam and her to properly meet the other's eye without flinching, and almost an entire other one to find the courage to lay with each other again. But they had, and this was the fruit of it.
Sam – ever the very vessel of patience – knelt in front of his son and laid his wide, perfect hands on the boy's small shoulders.
'Steady now Frodo, ye love ye sisters, don't you?'
'Maybe,' the repugnant child conceded.
'So how truly awful could it be to have another one?'
'They're boring, Merry's far more entertaining, I want another brother.'
Rosie was half way about to scream at the boy that he had had another brother, but he had certainly never been very entertained by him.
'Everyone's different lad, maybe this little'un will be a girl who likes dresses or maybe she'll prefer to roll around in that mud pile of yours, what right have us to judge? She ain't even here yet son, can ye really say what she'll be like before she's even left yer Ma's womb?'
Frodo scowled at his feet but gave no other sign of an argument brewing in his tiny face, so Sam pressed on.
'Besides, ain't you biting the tatter before it's boiled.'
Despite her anger, Rosie couldn't help but crack a smile at that. Sam always fell back on the old sayings of Tightfield when he was trying to prove something, it was a habit fostered in childhood and never quite grown out of. Frodo looked up at his father, confusion clearly written across his young brow.
'The babe may not even be a girl, so why throw a tantrum for something that hasn't and may never happen. Madness, I tell you Frodo-lad, madness it is. And you're not mad, are you?'
'No, Da,' said Frodo, his face brightening considerably in a way Rosie did not care for. 'I'm just not going to have another sister, and that's that.'
Sam sighed, clearly believing his words had gone in one ear and out the other. Yet Rosie, ever attuned to the strange and spiteful ways of her eldest son, did not. She knew Frodo had heard his father's words, and had taken them to heart, just like he always did. Yet she did not believe that the boy's heart and Sam's heart saw the same meaning.
She would need to talk to Sam about this and soon. But it was too late, she felt a strange tugging at her lower abdomen, and the splash of something wet between her legs. Her water, it had broken…oh Ancestors Combined, she was in labour.
This was death, this was how she would die, how she would see her death: from far away, looking down at her still screaming body. Her arms are flailing, they're trying to pin them down, the healers that is, Sam's not there anymore - they pushed him out when the blood kept coming. It's worse than before, even Hamson came out quicker than this child…than these children. She knows there should be three of them, but she can't see any of them up on her vantage point, up on the hill.
The grass is nice and wet beneath her feet, and for half a second, she feels young, like she did before the Hunt of the Ganymen or the Grand Plague, or even Sharky. She feels like she had when it was just the three of them: her, Sam and Marigold. Rosie can feel someone behind her and she knows who it is without looking, that's the way it works in a dream. She knows that it's her, her best friend, that hobbit lass who she'd called sister long before she ever met Xiang Ji. She wanted to speak to her, to ask her so many questions, but more than that, more than anything really, Rosie wanted to turn around and see her face…even if it were only in a dream.
She feels the ghostly spectre of Marigold Gamgee motion for her to follow. She doesn't want to move from her hill, don't really want to leave her body so far away on its own, but she daren't refuse, for Marigold is more than just her friend now, she's an Ancestor. So, she turns, and follows the hobbit-lass with golden curls who hauled herself up in a cave for a year when her brother left on a journey.
She wanted to tell Marigold of all that had come after her…after her death, of all the children, of all the places, of all the people, but there was no time. For Marigold's golden head was moving too fast down the hill and across the slope of this land Rosie knew, but had never seen before now. They moved quickly and soon, very soon, Marigold stopped, and Rosie came to stand beside her. She tried to look at her then but failed because her features were fuzzy and blurred, out of focus.
Marigold pointed, and Rosie finally saw it. Why the spirit had brought her away from her struggling body in the first place. In the middle of the glade, sat a table – it was one of those fancy tables you saw in the back gardens of folk like Mister Bilbo or the Sackville-Bagginses. Around the table sat three young hobbits in the kind of garb you would expect of someone who sat around that kind of table.
The two lass's skirts made bells with the weight of the petticoats beneath them, the boy wore a cravat and laughed at something his sister had just said with the kind of gaiety that only came with a secured livelihood. Slowly Rosie approached these fine hobbits and made herself known with a small, securely polite cough. Their heads swivelled and they all beamed at her, a beam that was so like her Sam's it left little doubt in her mind who they were.
'Mum!'
The boy said rising from his chair in the regal manner she'd only ever seen Mister Frodo pull off with any sincerity. The girls moved in the same manner and soon she found herself being ushered into a pretty legged chair between them.
'I'm giving birth to you.'
It seemed a stupid thing to say, but well, what else was there to say.
'Aye Mum, that you are.' Said one of the girls with just the tinge of sadness to her voice. 'That you are.'
Rosie turned to look at the girl, she had dark hair and blue eyes, almost as blue as Belladonna Baggins nee Took's were supposed to have been.
'Bella.'
Rosie said in a moment of insight. The girl smiled at the sound of her name, and all appearance of sadness vanished.
'And Jasmine Mum, don't forget about Jasmine.'
It was the other girl, her hair lighter and more woven through with the sunny gold of the Gamgee line.
'Jasmine, after my Grandmother.'
The girl smiled a smile only someone of Jasmine Bellwether's blood could, and Rosie felt at home stronger than she had in a long while. She turned than to the boy and frowned in concentration, she knew his sisters' names, but his was still a mystery.
'Come on Mum you can get it,' he smiled as if this was all some very funny joke. There were only two hobbits that had dared to smirk at her in that fashion, and she already had a son named after Merry Brandybuck.
'Pippin.'
His smile was glorious and shining and so like Sam's it made her want to cry and laugh all at the same time.
'Dad is a bit predictable in his naming trends, isn't he? Still you can't help but love him anyway.'
The thought of Sam reminded her of the blood, and the bed, and the healers who looked like they were on the verge of calling for a Ganyman to come and hear her Last Tale.
'I'm going to die, aren't I?'
Bella's teacup clattered onto her saucer and she yelped when some of the tea burned her through her skirts. Pippin scowled at her, she didn't seem intimidated but remained silent anyway.
'No Mum, you're not going to die.' Said Jasmine, completely ignoring the tension between her two siblings. 'That's not why we're here, you and Dad have many things still left to do before your time comes.' She grabbed her mother's hands then and squeezed them, looking directly into her eyes and Rosie knew why they were here. Why they were in this garden serving her tea, and she couldn't help the sob that escaped her lips.
'No, No, please no. I've lost your brother already, I can't lose you too, please no, we can work this out, there are…there must be things we can do to correct this.'
'No Mum, this is how it was meant to be. Not even the First Maker in his halls of Stone could undo what fate has written for us in our burrows of earth, nor should he try.'
She wasn't sure which one of them had said that, but in the end it didn't matter.
She stood up then, because no... no she won't let this happen, she couldn't lose them. Not now, not ever, it wasn't fair, it wasn't… Pippin grabbed her hand then and pulled her back into her chair.
'You don't understand, and I can't make you, but these next years are going to be very…difficult for you and Dad.'
'Ha!' Said Rosie, almost in tears.
'It's true, you thought losing Hamson was hard, but it's nothing compared to what's going to happen next. You won't be alone Mum, Dad will be there and there'll be others. Others, not exactly like me, but other brothers and sisters that I can unmercifully tease for coming after me.'
The glade, that had been so very warm and comforting now seemed cold and dark as if the sun had been snuffed out by a giant candle stopper. They were all alone, just her and Pippin, alone in that glade sitting at that fine table.
'Where are the girls? Where are Jasmine and Bella?'
Pippin smiled at her again and squeezed her hand tightly in his own.
'They had to go Mum, the Ganyman arrived at last.'
'What does that have to do with anything, Ganymen can't make the spirits of the unborn leave. Why would they?'
'No, but you knew that. Ganymen aren't there for the unborn, they aren't there to help their spirits find their mother's wombs, you know why they're there.'
'No, no they…they can't tell them to leave, they can't take them away from me.'
'They won't, only the dust will.'
'Why are you still here then? Why haven't the Ganymen removed the dust from you yet?'
'Who says they need to?'
And he laughed then, a big booming laugh that sparked memories of the first Ganyman she'd ever known. The Ganyman that had driven her and Sam's lives even beyond the grave: Hamfast Gamgee.
He was gone, and she was alone again.
And then a voice pierced the darkness.
'Rosie! Please Lass, please Lass wake up for me. It's your Sam, it's your Sam.'
Rosie opened her eyes, and she was in the bed again, the bed with all the blood in it. Her Sam was above her, looking down at her with such a mixture of grief and joy that she didn't even have to ask why.
'Can I hold them?'
Sam turned and picked up a bundle out of the basket that sat beside the birthing bed. A cry of irritation or just hunger came from the infant. It was a boy, a tiny, very healthy-looking boy.
'Pippin.' Rosie looked up at Sam then. 'Where are the girls? Where are Jasmine and Bella?'
Sam didn't even need to ask where she had gotten the names of two children she had never even met. He turned around again and picked up a second bundle, this one was larger than the first and much more, misshapen. It also did not move or squirm in its father's hold. Sam stood there, fear and sorrow deep in his green eyes.
'The Masters Gany wanted to bury them right away, but I knew you'd want to see them first, if…when you woke up again.'
'That's right I would, give me my daughters, Sam.'
'Alright…' he laid the still bundle in her arms and picked up his son and placed him back in the first basket. Rosie looked down on the cold little faces of her daughters. Conjoined births were not common in the Shire, but neither were multiple births and Rosie had had at least two of those already. The girls were fused together, as if it was only one head, that just happened to have two faces. The blanket they were wrapped in hid the rest of their bodies from her view, but Rosie had to see.
Limbs that should not have been there, stuck out of odd places on the two children's combined bodies. A third arm out of chest that should never have held it, a still heart that should have been on the inside and a tiny hand just reaching out of the side of the ribcage. They'd already gone blue and cold, there was no breath, no life in this tiny little body, and perhaps there never had been.
The New Hope
F.0. 09
Rosie had always wanted children, she'd always wanted a big family, and she had always wanted a big family with Sam Gamgee. She had got that, only their ninth year in the east and they already had a total of nine children – that is if you counted Hamson, Bella and Jasmine, witch Sam and Rosie nearly always did. Rosie would have thought she would have been happy, no scratch that she should have been happy, that's what her mother would have said. And to an extent she was…she was happy with her Sam, she was happy with her day to day life, she was even happy with her in-laws. It was just the part of her life that should have made her happiest – her children, that was coming out all wrong.
She should be happy, should feel joy when she looked at Merry and Pippin – who were quickly becoming little miniatures of their namesakes, – playing in the mud at the bottom of the garden. But she didn't, all she saw was the babies she had lost in favour of them. It wasn't their fault and she should know that, she really should have, but she couldn't stop it. Couldn't stop it from poisoning her feelings against them, she'd hardly been able to breastfeed them, she'd been so angry.
Rose her little Rose, felt more and more like she was Xiang Ji's daughter these days. You would think her, and Han had come from the same uterus the way they were glued to each other's side. Little Rose had also decided it would somehow be funny for her mother if she stopped speaking Western altogether. She still could, Rosie knew that, she had just liked the Eastern language better and thus had spoken nothing but that for over a year.
Ten-year-old Elanor had decided the first time she'd been allowed to accompany her father to court that she was going to be a politician – a decision that would continue to mystify her mother to the day she died. So, had therefore done the most logical thing possible in that regard, she had decided to shadow real politicians. Of course, it didn't matter who your father was, ten-year-olds did not get to sit in on the King's private meetings with his secret advisers. But she had accompanied her father to every meeting with the King that she could, and when she couldn't she had somehow managed to attach herself onto the royal princesses, becoming one of their favourite playmates before the age of nine. So, these days Rosie rarely saw her, and when she did they had little to talk about.
And then came the real heart of the problem, you see with all the others she probably could have gotten over it: her rational mind knew it wasn't Merry and Pippin's fault, Little Rose was still her daughter, and Elanor would come back to her when she was ready, yet Frodo-lad…was a monster.
The Fire began it, or rather the fire ended it. No one knew who started it, no that wasn't quite right, everyone knew who started it, they just could never prove it. It had started at the back of the Gamgee-Xiang farmstead. There had been a pile there, a pile of logs, that had stocked most of the houses, farms and huts that were littered and crammed behind the golden walls of the House of the Turtle Fish. The same huts, houses and farms that tended to either be made out of black treemark wood – one of the most flammable woods in the world, – or copper plated marble. Thus, fire was no strange occurrence to the Hobbits who lived within the protected walls of the city, they had one every few decades or so; each generation able to name at least one historic fire that happened within their lifetimes, yet out of all those many, many fires it was this one that struck the inhabitants of this ancient city as strange.
Fires were par for the course when you made half your structures out of black treemark, but that's where it should have ended. Wood, rock, marble, steel, everything crumbled and melted, and burned underneath this fire's wrath. They hadn't realized what it was at first, they thought it was just another fire brought on by poor building materials, but it wasn't, and it couldn't be stopped like the others had. The firefighters hadn't known that when they'd readied their buckets and hoses and set off into the heat of the blaze. They were all dead in a matter of seconds, many people were, over three thirds of that ancient city were gone before they even knew that there was something to run from.
That city, that had wavered invasion, plague and Ancestors only knew what other kind of atrocities, had fallen under that fire. Not everyone died of course, many of the young and the frail had been herded out of the walled part of the city into the relative safety of its Sandstone provinces, so there was that at least. The Gamgees should have been among those that left the city, neither Sam or Hamson were warriors after all, and they both had wives and young children to think of…Rosie's children should have been safe.
Rosie and Ji crowed their children to them…and it was only when Ji began to count heads that Rosie realized that they were one short…no, two short. For Frodo and Marigold where nowhere to be found. Yet Rosie's gut told her that they could no longer be in the city, and so leaving the others in Ji's care, Rosie went looking for them.
The fire by now had almost died down, at least in the north part of the city and people…the fools who had chosen to stay rather than flee…were slowly picking through what remained of their homes. Rosie, in her long shawl and knitted dress blended in almost seemingly with the drab, brow beaten crowd. These houses had been the very poorest in the city. The people here, who didn't have families or children, had nothing but the small box of wood they'd called home. And now they had nothing. The rich and the wealthy could look back upon the fires of yesteryear as exciting lightshows, but the poor and the destitute knew the true measure of those fires. The true measure of what they destroyed, which was why many of them would rather let their houses grow cold than risk lighting a fire in their small hovel.
Rosie flitted through the smouldering ashes of those once decaying hovels, until she reached the blackened stone of the now crumbling wall. This section had been consumed hottest by the fire, it had destroyed this part of the wall and spread up into the cold ash of the woods beyond. Rosie pushed herself through the dead limbs and charred bark that had once been trees and up onto the steady, rocky face of the hill they tried to grow on. She knew her children were here, she didn't know how she knew, but she did and more than that she knew that she had to find them quickly, or something very, very…bad was going to happen.
And there they were, just over the next ridge of the hill, kneeling together, their heads bent low. Rosie hauled herself up and crept over to the pair. She didn't know why she didn't just cry out to them then and there, for surely that would have broken them free of whatever trance they'd somehow managed to put themselves in, and for the rest of her days in her sleep that was what she did. In her dreams things went different, in her dreams she cried out to them and they turned and looked at her with slightly embarrassed faces, in her dreams she took their hands and marched them home, in her dreams everything worked out and they were a proper family again.
But this wasn't her dreams, and she didn't cry out, no instead Rosie just stood there, frozen as the Twins finished the strange chant they had been muttering. She just stood there as Frodo-lad opened his eyes, looked over his sister's still bowed head and smirked at his mother. She just stood there as the chanting seemed to flow around her, and not by the twins' voices either. Yes, she just stood there as the music and the voices grew till she could hear nothing else but that. Not the birds circling overhead, not the whistle of the wind, nor the people down below in the city, just the chanting, nothing else.
She stood there, frozen as ice, as Frodo looked down at his sister again, smiled, his eyes glinting red in the sunlight and plunged his hand into her chest. Rosie tried to scream then but it was too late, she had stood there for too long, and now her very voice was ripped away from her and she was rendered silent. Frodo threw his head back and laughed, not the laugh of a child having out-witted his slower sibling, or even the laugh of an adult having bested his foe in battle, no this was a laugh of a ruler to a peasant, or a god to an ant. This was the kind of laugh you heard when you were about to die. And then he stopped, for up his arm a light that seemed to have come straight from his sister's chest travelled up and into him. His whole body was a glow with it in seconds and Rosie saw for the first time what she had really given birth to when she had pushed Frodo out. Not the sour petulant child she'd always seen, no this was a creature of pure myth, this was a beast of bright undiluted light and madness, clothed in the skin of a hobbit.
The light stopped then, and Frodo threw his head forward, his long dark curls hiding his eyes at last from his mother's view. Yet the grin was still there, plastered unnaturally across his face as he opened his mouth and spoke.
'And so, it is as it should have always been, no longer severed in two we are now one. You should have never been Gold, there was only supposed to be one of us, that was how it was written, and you should not have changed it. Now we are whole, now we are one.'
He opened his eyes then and smiled at his mother, a smile that she had only ever seen on Marigold's face before. His eyes were wrong, they should have been blue like hers, but they weren't, they were green like Sam's and they were wrong. They were so very wrong. He opened his mouth again and spoke in a voice that was both his own and his sister's.
'We are one.'
He jerked his hand out of Marigold's chest and she flopped to the side, her head lolling lifelessly over her shoulder and landing with the dull thud of the dead on the dusty ground before them. Rosie found her voice at last and screamed.