Arda, Rhûn, The Borders of Harad, on a beach twenty-seven miles from the broken and empty city of Umbar: F.O 14
The caravan stopped finally after…so many years walking and walking from place to ruined place – this great chain of carts and horses, and camels and hobbits of all kinds finally stopped. And were it not for the fact that the place that they stopped was a beach, half hidden by the quick approach of high tide, Sam would have been as happy as he had been the first time, he'd held one of his children.
But this is not that world, and the sight of the high tide, and the thin stretch of glistening sand – though perfectly beautiful as all sand beaches were – in which the wide, and heavy-laden carts and carriages were forced to squeeze themselves onto, made something in his heart spasm. A familiar worry, and tightening in his chest which meant that he was very soon going to have to speak with the king again.
After all, for while this was no doubt a fine place to stop and rest for a picnic, or a day out at the seaside – it was no place for them. There was nowhere to water the animals – besides the sea of course and you couldn't feed beasts sea water he knew that for a fact – and honestly if they were going to pause and rest for the night it would be safer to do it somewhere higher. No one had unpacked yet, so perhaps he should even be so bold as to suggest to the king that perhaps they should press on just a little further until they found, maybe a rocky ledge or cave – perhaps even a city or town. They would be empty of course; they always were but still – this was no place for children to lay their heads down for the night.
The former Gardener was ripped from these rather mundane musings by the sound of the new royal herald – a young boy, probably too young to hold the position in sensible times but then they weren't living in sensible times.
'My hobbits, our great lord and king Ozymandias has followed the words of the stars and has decreed that we shall walk no more. Now hear me, when I say this I don't mean we're stopping for the night, or an hour and two, I mean our journey has come to an end. Unpack for the last time my friends, for this is our home.'
What?!
The boy bowed and disappeared into the golden embroidered tent of the king which had, Sam realised now, already been erected.
'What…what is he talking about Sam?' Rosie's voice is sparingly calm, not only for the situation, but for herself in general. He turns to look at her then, her long red hair is swept back and hidden by a long shawl wrapped around her head. She's holding the new baby Primrose on her hip, with a level of skill that can only really come when you had as many children as she did. Another twinge of guilt, they had tried to stop having kids, as Rosie's pregnancies seemed to be getting worse and harder.
'I…I don't know.' Said the Gardener, once again letting that worrying thought drop. They would have to speak about it soon, for Samwise could already see the swell of Rosie's next pregnancy around her belly. She hadn't told him yet, but that could be because she assumed he'd already guessed – and lately if they didn't need to talk about something they didn't until it actually became a problem. Or she herself had become locked in denial. They had tried to stop, they really had – they had taken contracept tea, powders, even moon teas during the earlier stages of some of the later pregnancies, but none of it had worked. She'd never said as much to him, but Sam knew Rosie blamed him for it – him and his strangeness, his…light in his chest. And he couldn't blame her for that, because he believed it too.
He loved his children, even the ones he had not wanted at first, they were his children and he could do nothing else but to love them – but this could not go on. It would destroy them eventually, because it would destroy her. He'd seen it happen before, to his mother, and she had not had to bear so many of Samwise's ilk as Rosie, but like always he did not have the courage to voice such things to his wife – so instead, he turned his attention onto the current problem and tried to smile, her worry away.
'I'm sure it's just a mistake,' said the Ringbearer. A lie, they both knew that, the king didn't make mistakes like that. He was clear in all his demands, and even if his actions looked like madness there was reason behind them. Whether that reason was wise was the article up for debate in most interventions. 'I'll talk to him,' Sam assured his tired looking wife. 'We'll sort this out Rose, don't you worry. I won't let you down.'
Again, went unsaid.
She pursed her lips, and looked at him with a peculiar glance that said nothing at all. In the past when she had been annoyed at him, or angry, or something she had shown it – she had yelled and screamed it in his face. But not now, they were both so tired. And maybe it wasn't just all the children, maybe that was just an excuse for a marriage that had gone wrong somewhere. That had lost something in all the traveling, and the wonder, and the new world opened to them. When it had just been them, just been their own family they had been at peace. Maybe they could have had a hundred children, or a thousand, and been just fine if…if Sam hadn't been…what he was.
But that was a world that didn't exist now, and Sam…Sam had a king to talk to.
The King's tent was a fine thing made of gold and silk, and other such fine things that if it hadn't been for the long train of carts behind it, Sam was certain someone would have seen it being erected.
It was a beautiful thing, but then even in this life – with travel and wear and tear – all the king's things were beautiful. It was really no longer worth mentioning, it was hardly worth noticing so Sam turned his eyes away and focused on stepping through that gloriously golden tent flap.
The inside was not quite so beautiful, filled as it was with scurrying hobbits, in long, worn traveling cloaks and robes shuffling furniture about. Sam moved easily between the busy servants of the King, keeping out of their way as he made his own way to the back of the tent. The king sat now in a chair that was not a throne, but might as well have been. He made every chair a throne just by his mere presence in it – and had Sam been someone else, someone who was not on quite so familiar terms with this particular hobbit, someone who had a simpler life filled with simpler worries and frets he might have taken the time to be impressed by this particular ability of his monarch. But the world in which Sam Gamgee had been that hobbit was dead – and this is the world he must live in now.
And so, he approached the king and cleared his throat to gain the great hobbit's recognition. His eyes opened, and he gazed up at Sam with a lazy smile across his fine lips.
'Samwise, to what do I owe you this day?'
Be strong, he told himself, be brave – and speak to him frankly, for Rosie's sake if no one else.
'Yer Majesty,' the former Gardener began, the hint of his old lower Hobbiton accent creeping into his words betraying his agitation. 'Why are we stopping here? If we were to just be pausing to rest for the night it might do us, if the tide were low and promised to remain so for the rest of the night. But it is not, and now you send your servant to tell us that you mean to halt the caravan permanently . What are we supposed to think of this, sire?'
The king smiled at that, as if this was all some kind of long elaborate joke to him.
'Perhaps you should not think on it at all Samwise, I am your king – at least for a little while longer and perhaps you should trust that when I give an order, I have the best of intentions behind it.'
Perhaps someone else, someone who was not Samwise Gamgee, would have seen the slight threat hidden in that joking, jovial tone. But Samwise would always be trusting of those he considered his friends, and the king had always been so to the Gamgee family, so he saw nothing but the jape he was certain it was intended as. It was not particularly comforting, but nor was it reason to stop talking and know his place within the court of this great and mighty hobbit.
'But to travel so long and through places that might have suited us much fairer – to stop here, where we cannot even truly unpack without severe discomfort. I do not understand it, Ozymandias – what knowledge does this order come from? We need to understand.'
Ozymandias stood up at that and approached Samwise with a gaze of utter contentment – he placed his hands gently on the other hobbit's shoulders and said in his most commanding tone yet.
'Then I shall settle your mind with this one command, my dear Ringbearer. Listen to it, obey it and find your peace by doing so. Be patient and wait, my friend. All your questions will be answered and by one even greater than I.'
It was not a helpful answer, but for once Sam knew when he had been silenced – and so he asked no more questions.
He was slightly annoyed by this turn of events – the king had always seemed so opaque in his reasoning before now, now Sam was as much on the outside of his mind as everyone else in the court. Or maybe he had just been lying to himself all these years, maybe he never knew the king at all.
Still, he knew enough to understand when he'd been dismissed at least, and a monarch you did not truly know could be a dangerous enemy. So, he held his tongue and left the King's tent, determined to go help his wife and children unpack. If he could not get the answers he sought, then he could at least be useful in some tangible way.
As he made his way to his family's camp, nearer the middle of the caravan trail, he tried to not think of his failure this day, instead looking ahead and focusing on the real world before him. Even from back here, he can just make out his children and his wife starting to unpack. They still don't understand why – and perhaps they never will – but Gamgees are never more productive in the present when they're anxious about their future.
He can see them all now; Elanor, fourteen, standing on a box directing her siblings this way and that. She's been taking on more and more responsibilities lately; acting more like an adult often than her own parents. Usually that thought would make him, laugh, but now it only adds to the weight of shame in his own belly. Then there's Rose, age ten, her arms full of the desert plants she kept collecting on their journey. She's fascinated by them and the way they can continue to grow despite their harsh environment. There's a metaphor hidden in there somewhere, but Sam's too tired to search for it.
So instead, he lets his eyes follow the running, and manic forms of Merry and Pippin, ages eight and six respectively, as they throw clumps of wet sand at one another's heads – so alike, they often seem more like twins than the brothers two years apart they really are. Just like their namesakes. They trip over a box of unsorted clothes, which two of their younger siblings had been raking through. Busy work, given to two children who wanted to be helpful but whose minds were not yet formed enough to help with more of the complicated tasks. Goldilocks, age four and the very spirit of his departed sister Marigold – hence why she did not share her name, it was just too painful. And poor wee Hamfast – a sturdy toddler of three, often lost in the crowd of his siblings' more loud and demanding personalities. They scream at their older brothers and start to throw those ragged, and overworn clothes at them. It ends in a tussle that no one even attempts to break up anymore.
Not even Sam, though his feet have taken him far closer to his family than when he started this little count of his children. Instead after a brief fond smile in their direction, he turned his eyes away from the laughter and the squeals of his children and found their younger siblings – gathered closer to where their mother sat over by a box of their actually in use clothes and trinkets. Little Daisy, sitting at her mother's feet and relaying an intricated story about a crab and swordfish that she probably heard from either Merry or Pippin. She'd recently discovered talking, and now could not be made to stop – or at least so said Rose, but Sam had always found it easy to distract his daughter with a tickle fight or a piece of honey bread. Which was a lot easier to accomplish than settling her sister, the baby of the family little Primrose. Who sat beside her sister now, studying a butterfly with rapt attention.
And then there's Rose, poor Rose – if only he could have been a better husband, if only he could have been someone, something else for her. But such dreams were fantasies in the truest sense of the word. And not worth bothering over now, now that she was pregnant again. No, no stop Sam – Rose wasn't his mother and besides, his children weren't him, perhaps there was still hope for a happier ending. Though where that could come from is only a fool's guess.
They have a tent, it's out of its box now thanks to the work of Elanor and Rosie, but it still needs setting up – and for the big pole only Sam really has the strength to lift it anymore. He supposes there was always Hamson and his boys, but their cart had stopped further back and besides Sam was here. He could do it; he could do something at least.
Up went the pole, sturdy and straight and ever present. Not hard to do, so long as you were allowed to. He shook his head and focused on the smaller poles of the tent now – don't think about Frodo-lad, you can't do anything about that now. His mother won't have him anywhere near the rest of the family. At least – she told Sam once – not until he can prove he is no longer a danger to them anymore. And that was unlikely to happen, given his temperament and…gifts. Still, not all was so bad – a couple of years past they had met back up with the Blarney Sons again. They had been freeing a village of hobbits from the dead, and since by then it was clear even to bull headed Sam that young Frodo-lad couldn't stay near the rest of the little ones anymore. Not with the kind of power he had started to show, the kind of power only found in the darkest of Samwise's nightmares.
But don't think about it Sam, don't think about how your son could have had a nice normal childhood, and friends, if only he had been born to a different father. Think instead on how pleased chief Ka had been to see the Gamgees safe and whole; how sorry he had been for the…misunderstanding between them, how excited he had been at the prospect of training one of the Gamgee children in the art of the Blarney Son.
Think instead that there was no other way to keep everyone safe, think instead of the need to separate Frodo from his more vulnerable siblings – while he gained control of his powers. The Blarney Sons didn't hold the same kind of power but they were the closest thing that Frodo-lad could come to. For although the light was Sam's – he had never been able to control it the way his son could intricately. And he had never saw the need to try – there was no bright light soaring from Sam's hands, or hypnotising stare or any of the other terrifying things the boy had started to do before he left.
It's better for Frodo-lad to learn some responsibility about his new powers away from his siblings, with people who could really teach him that. Yes Sam, think on that instead. Think on the Blarney Sons unnerving messenger birds – which they send when they can – telling you of your son's progress. But don't think on that last message, delivered almost a year ago now, how they worried about the streak of cruelty in Sam's eldest boy. How they were having some slight difficulty raining him in and teaching him patience, and mercy. Sam thinks instead of what it would take to mount a search, the people, the resources, the time, and whether Rosie would even let him go in the first place, given all their other children, plus the -one she might be expecting.
When they were settled, when they knew at last what the king had planned for them – he would look into it. Even if none of it ever brought fruit, he had to try something.
What else could anyone do for their child, but try something. It's what every single hobbit that surrounded him was doing now as they unpacked their life for the hundredth and final time. Tents, like his own went up in rapid fashion – the hobbits building them so used to it at this point it was easier than speaking. Around those tents camels and other beasts of burden are watered and fed, and children are let loose from the carts they had been crouching on together, to run wild around the various minor camps or just fall asleep in the shelter of their parents belongings.
Moving from place to place, looking for a home to raise their children in that was safe from the dead – but really there was no place that was safe from the dead. Certainly not here, on a beach with no shelter or walls, or space from the ocean. What was the king thinking? Or perhaps he wasn't thinking at all, perhaps he had just gone insane. Yes, that was it he had gone insane, the regret, the pain of losing so many of his people had finally broken him. It was a pity, but at least it was a somewhat logical explanation.
I mean, why else would you stop at a beach?
And that is the moment, dear readers, when the water began to rumble.
In front of all the hobbits – the mothers and fathers and children and tweens, who have stopped on this beach – the sea splits and before their eyes rises a creature unlike anything Sam has ever seen before. At first, he's only able to see its head with any clarity – it looks a bit like a lizard, but with a notable beak like point to the top of its jaw. The eyes are as big as nothing else that has ever stepped upon this land. They are the biggest things, the biggest eyes that Sam has ever seen on anything living, or dead. The two nostrils at the end of the thing's green snout are almost as big and when they snort, the gust of wind they make is so powerful that it flattens what little tents had already been constructed. Including Sam's own attempt. Thank Ancestors they had been mostly cloth, with the hardest part of them being the poles that held it all together. And that no one had gotten around to putting their sleeping children inside of them yet.
Eventually though as the waters shift and change before him, Sam sees another part of the creature at last. At first, he doesn't know what he's seeing, because for some strange reason it looks like a small island; with a very austere looking collection of buildings carved into the rocky crevices of its mountains. And yet, he knows without thinking that this island is part of the creature. A fact that is segmented as fact and true for him when the creature rises up just a little bit and he can cast his eyes down to see what lies underneath the rocks of the island. It's a shell, like one of those big empty things you saw sometimes in the manthom house back in the Shire. What were they called again…turtle…turtle shells? And then, with the spotting of a tail fin just behind the island's top, Sam realises just how daft he's been. He can try and blame it on the heat, and the stress and the wonder of seeing a beast like this in the flesh for the first time but either way he can't belive he's been this slow. To not even guess what the creature is after seeing it so many times depicted in everything from the art, the jewellery, to the bloody crown of the king in the golden city of…of….
The Turtle-fish.
Oh Ancestors, it was a Turtle-Fish.
Suddenly a hand lands on Sam's shoulder and squeezes it in an almost fond manner.
'Ringbearer,' says King Ozymandias. 'Welcome to our new home.'
And all Sam can do then is stare, with his eyes wide open for once.
It is a difficult thing, to climb up the nose of a Turtle-Fish. Difficult enough to accomplish by oneself with nothing but the clothes on your back – so you can but only hope to picture the gigantic task ahead of not only the two Gamgee parents and their kin, but the whole Golden Caravan of the turtle-fish.
For starters beasts had to be left behind, there was no way even the Blarney would persuade them to step onto that turtle-fish's back. And much of their heavier cargo and carts as well. But this still left many a hobbit weighed down with heavy packs on their back, attempting to carry their many unruly children up the length of the turtle-fish snout, then head, then neck. Many resorted to tying a rope round a wrist of every child in their care and just pulling them up. They wanted to run and be wild, they might as well do so in the direction their elders wished for them to go.
In one hand Sam held Merry-lad by the wrist, and in the other he held wee Pippin by the arm. They had seemed particularly unwilling to climb today, but it couldn't be helped Sam knew within his gut that if the Gamgees didn't climb this great beast today, then all would be lost. All the world, everything they tried to build, it would all be lost to the dead. He couldn't explain how he knew this exactly but often it was better not to examine those feelings, simpler to just heed their advice blindly so. Fortunately, the other children had been in calmer and in a more agreeable mood, with Goldilocks and Hamfast skittering up the turtle's neck happily enough, and the little ones only stopped from following by their too tiny legs. Elanor and Rose carried them.
As Sam dragged the two boys up the nose of the beast, he couldn't help but look ahead to the shell, and the island that sat neatly on its back. As they moved closer, he could see the outlines of hobbits staring down from the island's rocky edge. And he knew without asking that these hobbits were waiting for them. These hobbits in dark clothing and severe faces. And Sam couldn't help but wander how they managed to stay so dry when not but a few moments before – well okay half an hour it takes a long time to walk up the nose of a turtle-fish – their entire home was submerged in the ocean below.
And as they continued to climb Sam realised that Rosie was pulling ahead of everybody else. Rosie who sometimes has trouble walking on flat surfaces was skittering up the turtle's neck now – baby Primrose still strapped to her front in a sling – like she was some kind of mountain goat.
Sam caught Ji's eyes – burdened down with her own babies strapped to her back – and the two shared a moment of utter confusion . Rosie, their Rosie…seemed for the first time in years, excited about something other than getting the birthing pains over with. It was astonishing.
She was walking, no practically running towards the black robed hobbits; and Sam couldn't help but stop and stare as his wife reached the lip of the shell, and hauled herself and her babe up onto the glorious shinning surface above. The sight had frozen him in place, but with some prodding from his two eldest daughters he started to move again, dragging the wriggling boys after him. Still wondering in a half daze what the Blarney just happened?
Eventually, everyone makes it up onto the island on the turtle-fish's back – they didn't run with a baby strapped to their chest but they made it up there anyway. It was a small island, as island's on the backs of turtle-fish go. Barely large enough to house the great stone temple that rode on its back.
An awe-inspiring thing to look upon, this great stone monolith was the temple of the Ganyman. That place both connected and separate from Middle-Earth where all Ganymen who are true Ganymen are trained. And the severe hobbits that had met them at the top of the island, were the guardians of the place. Those Ganymen who have dedicated their lives to guarding the only closable portal between the world of reality and the world of the spirit.
As one of the apprentices led Sam and his family round the sharp, twisting corridors of the High Gany temple – Sam can't help but let his mind drift with all the questions now clogging up his brain. Like if every Ganyman trains here, did his father? He knows his sister didn't – how could she? The only time she was even away from the rest of the family is when she would go up into Bindbole Wood to the Cave of the ancestors. Unless that was somehow connected to this place? Could it be, it was certainly not the strangest of theories by all accounts. He would have to find someone to ask, but first – sleep, yes sleep in an actual bed for once.
The rooms they were led into were…it was hard to describe. Fancy, yes, definitely
fancy – fancier than anything Sam had ever beheld before. And yet at the same time, they were simple. There were five rooms in the Gamgee's (or at least Sam's branch of the Gamgee family tree) new apartment – a washroom, a dining room, a sitting room, and two bedrooms at the back. Personally, Sam would have preferred an extra bedroom rather than someplace for them all to sit – they had seven kids with them all under the age of twenty, sitting still wasn't exactly a strong suit for the Gamgee clan right now.
And part of him – that small, little tired part of him – would have liked to share a bed only with his wife for once. But it would have been unfair to shove all seven children, babies and all into the one room – even if it did look like the larger of the two rooms.
He didn't know, maybe they could set up some sleeping roles on the floor of the sitting room , move the golden, fancy chairs out of the way and make it into another sleeping area. It's not like they were ever gonna use those chairs anyway. It was a wander they had such things in this temple at all, especially considering, well, where not an hour ago all this must have been. Deep, deep under the water – and yet if that were so, then why wasn't anything even just a little bit wet? Such strange thoughts plagued the mind of the ringbearer as he lay his head down and attempted to sleep amongst the pile of his wife and younger children.
It shouldn't have been hard, he'd done it a million times before in a million different places and yet, lying here in this great, carved, mighty bed it felt almost impossible. Maybe it was the ceiling, yes, the ceiling was most definitely unnerving. Symbols of ancient times, most of which not even Sam was entirely sure of, looked down at him now as if…as if they were trying to show him something, something he just couldn't see.
But it was the fox, the large overly carved stone vixen in the middle of it all that unnerved him the most. She just stared down at him, like it was only the stone that was keeping her from leaping from that ceiling and down onto Sam Gamgee's neck, or better yet his throat.
Don't let yourself think on its Sam, it's just your usual morbid thoughts – it doesn't mean anything. Just close your eyes and think of only nice things, and then surely for once you shall get to sleep swiftly as you did back before…before the quest, before the ring, before…before…Shelob.
This is the largest feast Sam has ever beheld laid out before him, and that's saying something – for over the years and his many, many travels Sam has seen untold amounts of food and feasts laid out before him.
But this, this is something quite different indeed.
It's almost like every dish from every corner of the hobbit world is represented in this table. To the left of him, hobbits in the dark red robes of the Red Rebels eat duck meat stewed in a sauce made of walnuts and pomegranate syrup.
To the right of them are hobbits from the Crystal Dynasty, deep in the southlands of this middle earth. The food before them is a casserole that Sam doesn't know the name of. But he knows without asking that it's made with lamb mince, mixed with raisins and dried apricots and spiced with turmeric, cumin, coriander, ginger and apricot jam. It's served with turmeric rice, and would taste delicious if Sam had the balls to reach out and try some – but he doesn't, and so he just sits there with his hands in his lap and listens to the two hobbits enjoy their meal.
The king is there as well, but farther away – so Sam can only just make him out by the corner of his eye. The dish he's eating is called Koshari. A dish made of lentils, macaroni, garlic and chickpeas in a spicy tomato sauce topped with fried onion and a drizzle of garlic vinegar. The smell alone made Sam's mouth water to the point of almost drooling, but he couldn't turn to stare, not at the king's food. That part of his life, where he would dare to do such a thing was over now. And so, all he could do was savour the smell, until that left him too.
After all the king was not the only one sinking his teeth into a delicacy of his home region – just a few seats down from Sam, next to Rosie and Elanor sat Ji – who ate her usual thin skinned flour dumplings, with her sharp, highly polished chopsticks – the kind she had never managed to teach Sam or indeed her own husband how to use. They didn't have the skill. They had been a gift from her grandmother, passed down through the generations – they were in fact so special to her that she normally only used them in private. Strange she would use them now at such a public feast. And yet there she went, gripping the dumplings with them and dipping the desirous dough balls in a mixture of soy sauce and vinegar.
But why…why would she do that here in such a crowded place, where it would be all too easy to lose something
One of the great Ganymen, the folks that led this place, dug into what looked like a giant green pepper, covered in a white sauce and stuffed with meat, dried fruits and spices. There were dishes of vegetables and rice, tomato sauce – stringy meat that looked just like old clothes cut up into rags. Something that Sam couldn't even begin to describe, although it looked like long strings, and when eaten a hobbit could make a harsh sucking sound as they slurped it into their mouth. Along the table there was even some kind of soup made of yogurt and cucumbers.
And then he looked down at his own plate, breaded fish and deep cut chips all slathered with vinegar and salt and wrapped tightly in that old news rag of his youth – the kind they used to print down in old Michel Delving back when it was a place that stood at all; and pay you half a gold shire penny to take round the good neighbourhoods of the day. Why he hadn't seen one of these since…since before Proudfoot had taken over and banned the practice entirely.
And then it clicks in him where exactly he is, in his own dream. And he looks up then into the reflection of his own face thrown back at him from a mirror, no a dark, deep pool on the other side of the room. He looks into his own, withered, ancient, rotten face and Sam Gamgee screams.
He screams himself all the way awake.
Sam woke in the middle of the night, to the shape of the fox in the ceiling staring at him – so of course he couldn't get back to sleep. With nothing left for him to do beyond lie there imagining the terrible things the beast could do to him, Sam got up. Climbed from out of the pile of sleeping Rosie and children, crept past the second room where the older children slept in a similar pile in the middle of Elanor's bed, and out into the twisting corridors beyond the Gamgee apartments.
Finally, after about half an hour of stumbling around in the darkness, he made it back out to the smell of fresh air and the light of the full moon - he's stepped out onto one of the various balcony alcoves hidden around the ever so slightly swaying place. He takes one great breath in of that sweet fresh air - before with a terrible gut feeling, he realises that he's not alone out here. It's one of the severe hobbits from before, an older matronly hobbit with a stern and tired face. She's leaning over the balcony with her eyes closed. For a moment Sam thinks about turning away, of maybe going back to the arms of his sleeping wife – but it's too late the old hobbit matron has already spotted him.
'Ring bearer. Approach me, I would have words with you.'
Slowly Sam approaches her – cautious and unsure as he is around everyone and everything in this strange new place.
'They say you are the son of a Ganymen, do we seem so very strange to you, Ringbearer?'
'I'm no Ringbearer, Mistress.' Said Sam.
'You carried it though.' She spoke.
'Not for long,' he corrected.
'Long enough.' She spoke.
'Long enough for what?' He spoke.
'To leave its mark on you. Now come, you have woken from your dreams to ask me your question and so you must ask, otherwise what is the point of any of this?'
For a moment Sam stood there in silence and thought, thought of all the many, many questions that he had let run through his mind instead of sleeping. He could have asked any of them, he could have even asked all of them – but in the end he only really needed to ask one.
'This place…what is it? I mean, I know it's the temple of the Ganyman, I'm no Ninnyhammer – but the turtle-fish, I thought they were all dead. And why is it carrying you?'
And she smiles at him then, a large, almost guileless smile that looks strange on such a wise looking face.
'No not dead, not quite yet at least. An odd question, Ringbearer – for you already know the answer or at least you should. As the son of a Ganyman you should have been raised in tales of our land. For when the great turtle- fish of old that carried our ancestors across from their sinking home, was finished its journey, and the others were ready to leave it's back the Ganymen – or at least the wisest of them, chose to stay and turn the once thriving city of our kin into a temple. Where the young and the gifted could study the arts of the Gany. Your father told you none of this.'
For a moment Sam let the silence around them sink deep into his soul, and then he sighed and said in a smaller voice than before.
'Aye, well maybe he might have – but he died when I was too young to fully understand his stories.'
She reaches out then and squeezes his hand, it's a comforting gesture and one he didn't expect to find in this strange place.
'Hush now,' says the wise one. 'A Ganyman never truly dies. Follow me this night and I will show you.'
Sam drew back then, slightly unnerved at her tone. It was much too light.
'Show me what?' He said, a voice barely above a waver.
And she looks at him then and laughs.
'Why good gardener, why everything is dry of course. After all, how can we function as an organisation if our foundation keeps sinking into the ocean? Have you never wondered?'
And then she turnned and left, and Sam curious enough to ignore the little voice in his head telling him to run away, to go back to bed and the arms of his wife and think of this no more – followed her. Leaving the light of the slowly rising sun behind them.
She led him eventually to a room nearer the centre of the tangle of mazes/corridors that made up the inside of the high Gany temple. This room was bare of everything, no furniture, no art, no sign of comfort whatsoever. Just bare stone walls. The farthest wall away seemed to be made of a glistening, black stone that shimmered despite the fact that no light is getting to it, because this room had no windows, nor any lamps or candles attached to the wall. In fact, he's not sure how he's seeing anything at all, giving the darkness all around them.
But there was no time to muse on that because the elderly hobbit matron was pushing him forwards towards the glistening rock. Pushing him forwards until he could touch it, until he could realise that it's not a rock at all but…water. Black, glistening water. And then she pushed him through it and he fell.