Sam fell to his knees on the other side of the wall pool, cracking and scarring them something deep. By right the shock alone should keep him down there on the ground for some time. And yet the anger, the anger at the rudeness of being shoved through a portal without so much as a by your leave, propelled him to his feet again. Which was when he realised that he was no longer inside the temple anymore.

No, instead he was standing on top of a mountain. In fact, he was standing on top of a giant flat-topped stone, on top of a mountain – a position that felt somehow familiar. Not in the sense of something he'd experienced before – this land was no Mount Doom. But like something he heard in a story – a Gany tale from long ago, that he no longer could quite remember anymore.

So, he didn't waste time trying. No, he went about immediately getting off this Blarney topped rock. Which was a little bit of a struggle, especially with his battered and bruised knees – but not impossible. Then at last, when his feet touched the dirt path of the mountain road, he found himself walking – even though all he wanted to do was fall to the ground and groan at the sharp jarring pain in his back. But he didn't do that, instead he was running down that path seemingly with no will to do otherwise.

Oh well, at least he should reach the bottom soon enough.

The path down the mountain brought him deep into a heavily wooded area – the trees were crooked and strange looking, to Sam's eyes at least. As if no living thing had had a hand in them at all. And then he knew the answer, even though he never asked the question, that these were the trees of the dead.

As he made his way through these trees, a sense of dread overtook him, and he found himself running even faster down the mountain. Or at least he would have, if he hadn't just run face first into the wall of a smithy. As he fell to his butt, Samwise looked up at the building that had caused him such pain. It almost looked like Hamson's workshop – but of course that was left behind in the smouldering ruins of the Golden city of the Turtle Fish.

A twinge of guilt as he stood up again, but he couldn't stop, and he knew it, he needed to get down that mountain, otherwise he'll never see his wife, or his children, or his brother and his family ever again. And so, he moved, or at least he tried to move past the small form of the smithy. But no matter what way he moved, a wall or a stone was always in his way. Soon he realised that he would probably never move past it and that the only way forward now was to go into the smithy.

Stupid as that might seem to the reader, we must remember that this world Sam has stepped into does not operate with the logic of the living, but rather the certainty of the dead.

And so, after taking one big calming breath, that was exactly what Samwise Gamgee did.

When he entered the shop, Sam was hit by the smell of heating metal. At first, he was overwhelmed by it, his eyes began to water enough to – just for a moment – blind him to his surroundings. But then it passed, as such things always do, and he could see everything at last. The weapons, and the pots on the wall – hung like some prize hunting trophies, for all to see. He could see the rustic looking table, crudely made, barely even sanded. No one had ever eaten at that table he knew; it was for work purposes only – to lay tools on and to plan out the next creation. And then finally Sam turned his unnatural green eyes to the smithing heart of the room. At the forge, pumping away at its bellows stood a hobbit. A strong hobbit, a hobbit that with a tightening in his gut, Sam realised that he knew.

Hamfast Gamgee.

Hamfast Gamgee, alive…well, almost.

The word 'Dad' escaped Sam's lips before he could stop himself, and the other hobbit let the bellows clatter to the floor, and spun around to stare at Sam. Yes, the memory of his face might be a little foggy, and filled with childhood reverence for a parent long since passed, but there was no denying that this was Sam's father.

He would know him even in the worst of nightmares. The face, the shoulders, the feet, the belly. This was his father – and in a dream like stagger, both hobbits met in the middle of the room, and fell into each other's arms sobbing.

All Hamfast could say was sorry, over and over again. But Samwise couldn't understand why – what did his Da need to apologise for? He didn't need to voice this question out loud before Hamfast was answering. He was sorry for leaving Sam and his siblings, and his mother. He was sorry for being too stupid to listen to Daisy, even though he knew she was right to advice caution. He was sorry for not being a better husband to Sam's mother throughout her sickness. And most of all he was sorry for keeping so many secrets. Not just in a professional capacity as a Ganyman, but in his own life. He regrets so many things that he was never able to say out loud. He was never able to say to Mister Bilbo that he knew who the older hobbit was to him, and loved him for it. He was never able to tell Sam the truth, the truth he had seen in one of his many Gany-visions.

Sam asked what was the truth? Though part of him knew what the older 'younger' hobbit was talking about, he needed to hear it from his father's mouth.

The other hobbit reached out and cupped the side of his son's face. 'Oh, my Sam-lad, you know who you are and you know what it means for the living world and the next. Don't make my mistakes and hide from the truth, it will only lead to death. And the dead have too much power as it is. I would hate to see a world where you joined their ranks.'

Part of Sam didn't understand – he knew what he was, some part of him had always known, so how could he be lying to himself about that? He didn't have the luxury of that artifice. He said as much to his father. And Hamfast laughed and said…

'Oh Sam-Lad, do you really think knowing is the end of the story?'

Sam accepted the admonishment, because the feel of his father's arms around his shoulders made him feel like a small boy again. And so, he had not the will to fight with the other hobbit.

The two sat there, sobbing and crying, and apologising to each other – kneeling on the floor of that workshop. And as Sam cried, his face hidden in his father's neck, the other hobbit and his workshop slowly faded into nothing; and Sam Gamgee was left kneeling on the forest floor, his head in his hands, lamenting the parent that was now lost to him forever.

Sam, still shaken from his encounter with his father's ghost, wasn't really paying attention to where his path down the mountain led him next. Through no true will power of his own his feet end up taking him into the heart of a meadow . Filled with nothing but swaying grass, and long-stemmed poppies and marigolds.

Clearly, he'd wondered away from the path.

For a moment Sam just stood there, in the middle of that beautiful field, feeling a little at peace – though he couldn't truly give it that name with his legs still shaking from the words of his father.

And he heard a laugh – a laugh that for less than a second, he didn't recognise, because it had been so very long since he'd heard it. Not since childhood. That laugh had been gone from both the world, and the life of Samwise Gamgee almost as long as his father's voice had. And for a moment, after he realised what that laugh meant, he didn't even truly believe he was hearing it at all.

And then she appeared.

May Gamgee.

The sister he had lost to the Great Sickness.

She was wearing her plain blue cotton dress, the one with the blue ribbon wrapped around the middle. The one she only wore for parties and special occasions. And her hair was shining like amber in the moon glistening down from the top of the mountain.

Sam stood there; his voice caught in his throat. Because she couldn't be real, he couldn't be seeing this. His father maybe, he was a Ganyman- and a trained one at that – he could talk to the living. But May, May was just a normal hobbit – that wasn't how this was supposed to work.

Then she saw him, and suddenly she was crying out his name as she ran full tilt towards him. Then she leapt and pounced and toppled him over, wrestling him to the ground. She was hugging him and laughing and calling him fat and old. And it couldn't be little Sam-lad, he would never be so sullen.

He didn't remember May ever being so cheerful, but then that could be just the trick of a child's memory – for near to her death, there had really not been so much to be cheerful about. There was a pain in Sam's back then, and he called for mercy from May, and laughing, she rolled away.

And then they were both kneeling in that meadow, looking at each other. And a thought suddenly occurred to Sam – so he asked his sister, or at least this person that looks like her.

'So, this is the land of the Dead then?'

And she smiles at that and says – 'Only one kind of dead, Sam. Only one kind.'

'Am I dead then?' He asked her.

And she looked at him thoughtfully at that.

'Do you want to be?'

Sam couldn't help but feel offended at that – assuring his sister that, no he does not want to be dead. Why would he want to be dead?

Her smile got meaner at that.

She asked him why he would want to be alive? He didn't seem to like his life at all. And things are only going to get harder, especially if he keeps lying to himself and hiding.

Sam snapped at that. Lying to himself, why does everyone think he's lying to himself? What is he lying to himself about? The fact that inside his chest, there hid a terrible light – the light of a Silmaril. No, hiding from that. The fact that he passed down that light to every one of his children, and that bearing them has started to drive Rosie as mad as their Ma? Nope, he was not hiding from that. Granted they haven't discussed it as a couple, but they both know it – and Sam's certainly not hiding it from himself.

So, what else could they be talking about? The fact that his life now revolves around the whims of fate, or the fancies of the more powerful than he. Nope, nope pretty much covered that in his first week trapped within the king's golden palace, not even permitted to see the gardens. A fact that still scorches him to the very bones. The very bones of him, May, the very bones of him.

'Oh Sam,' said May with an annoying sigh. 'You really think there's anyone more powerful than you?'

Sam laughed, thinking it was just another joke. But his sister still wasn't smiling, and after a minute he felt foolish even trying to see the humour in it at all.

He fell silent and May, young May, still a girl in her ribbons and curls began to speak again.

'I was given so little time on this Middle-Earth brother, so little time to do anything with my life. No time to find love, or a purpose, no time for any life at all. But not so you, you've got long years left yet before you can rest in this place. So long, so much time, that most of us never even get a look at – don't waist it by dawdling and second guessing yourself. If something's wrong in your life, in your marriage, in your family – fix it. And wake up, before you dream your whole first life away and the dead are already marching on your people.'

And as she spoke, the sky above her head grew dark with rain clouds and thunder. The wind whipped around the two siblings and the meadow, that was once bright and full of life seemed to wilt and wither before Sam's eyes. Like the power of winter and autumn had consumed them at last. Now there were no flowers anymore, just grass, and dead grass at that.

The air felt cold with ice and winter chill, and Sam wished he was wearing something warmer than his sleeping shirt when he had stepped through the pool on the wall.

And then May stopped talking and just looked at her brother with tears in her eyes, and the clouds above them melted away – leaving nothing but the bitter blue sky above.

And Sam looked into her face then, and began to weep himself – she was so young, though she was born before him. She died so young; it wasn't fair. And she said he had so many years left to go – why? What made him worthy of so much time to spend, to use and waste as he willed, when she was given so little. And as if she could hear his thoughts, May smiled again at that, and reached out to touch her brother's cheek.

'My story was over, Sam; but yours isn't halfway done.'

And then with the rustle of the trees, and the leaves behind him – she was gone, and Sam found himself alone on that mountain…again.

Sam got up because the meadow was dead, and the path he had wondered away from was suddenly right in front of him again. But he didn't walk down it quickly, he stumbled along it in a dream, the words of his father and his sister still churning in his mind.

Had he been wasting time? Had his desire not to get into a fight, or anger his wife more than needs be, actually hurt their marriage? Had they just been using up the small chance they had at further happiness? Because not talking to each other, not yelling or screaming or doing whatever it was that hobbits did when they were angry – sometimes Sam felt like he couldn't even remember anymore – was not making them happy. Not at all.

As he had been churning this over, lost in his own mind, the path had grown rockier and more cracked. Covered in weeds and matted grasses – none of which he'd noticed of course. Not until the fox, her fur a startling bright orange and her eyes the same unnatural green as his own appeared in front of him, and blocked his way.

Sam stopped, his mind gone silent for once, and stared at the vixen – who wagged her bushy tail at him, almost like a dog. And then turned her back on him and walked away down the path, for a few seconds before stopping and looking back at him expectingly.

'I'm…I'm supposed to follow you?' Says Sam feeling a little ridiculous.

The fox nodded like no fox would out in the real, living world. With the tilt of irritation pulling on her long snout.

Sam knew when the Ancestors were telling him something, even if he still couldn't understand what – so he didn't have to be forced down the mountain in the wake of that fox's paw-prints.

Deep into the wood he went. Past where the light still shone down through the leaves up above, past where he could hear the twittering cries of birds in their nests. No more blue jays, toucans, jackdaws or wood-pigeons.

No, now there was only silence, and the creeping darkness of the wood, and the trees around him.

Everything felt wrong. Is that the right word? He considered, but shook his head. No, that was too small a word. Everything felt…untoward. Like there was a terrible strangeness to the air itself, and it was seeping into his lungs and his heart.

He should have fallen to his knees and screamed, cried, bellowed out the wrongness of this feeling – but what would be the point? Who would be there to hear him?

So instead, he kept walking.

And walking.

He walked until his feet bled and his toes blistered.

The forest around him, still dark and terrible now seemed covered with cobwebs. No, not cobwebs – spiderwebs.

Giant spiderwebs.

And he realised that he'd seen these webs before – in a different land, in a very different time. And that was the moment when he became entangled in those spiderwebs. And he could swear that he was there again, back in the cave of Shelob. He could swear he could hear her bloated body moving through the trees all around him. Even though he knew logically that that was ridiculous. Shelob was dead. He remembered her death in vivid detail – the light, the burning, the smell. She was dead, not even bones had been left.

This must be what Mister Frodo felt like when he was captured, captured by her. When Sam was too slow, too distracted, too weak to save him. To protect him.

'Oh, that will help your predicament.' Hissed a female voice. For a moment Sam was convinced that it was her, Shelob come back from the dead to seek her bloody vengeance on him. But then, something brushed against his side and he saw the fox, the fox that had led him here.

'Does this give you comfort? Making yourself small? Do you fit better this way'?

She was not speaking – moving her lips as most speaking creatures would – but he knew it was her voice. The fox, strangest of all the sacred creatures of Hobbit-kind. Considered most sacred to the worship of Fãö. So, was this her he saw before him? And not just her animal. Is this Fãö…Fãö who blessed them with the night when the sun first stole it from them?

'Whatever be the truth of me, creature of light, I am here and I speak to you – must there be any other answer than that?'

Sam didn't answer, at least not in words – but part of him, the part that had never really been as mortal as the others around him couldn't help but agree with her. What power was a name in here? It was the living world in which the names of the dead held more power than they should.

The fox did not smile at him, for even in a land of the dead facts are facts – and foxes didn't generally smile at hobbits. Even as remarkable a hobbit as Sam Gamgee was. However, he could tell she was pleased with him regardless, it was the nature of this place. That is, to know things where in the waking world you could only guess at.

It was in this vein that he gained the strength to ask her if she would free him from these cobwebs.

And the fox looked at him curiously for a few moments before replying in a tired, and cynical way.

'Even in this land one can fool themselves into believing what suits them. Think those are truly the webs of a spider? Perhaps they are, but only in the same vein as you are a hobbit – it is a belief that shapes the form of this realm, as it often is in the other. Think again and look closer son of Hamfast, child of Bell, husband of Rose and father to many. Look again at what traps you, and tell me what form you think it really takes?'

And so, Sam looked and beheld not spiderwebs as he had once thought but thorns, many thorn encrusted plants in fact. No not just any plants, he knew these plants – for during the time before his death, Hamfast was forever trimming back these bushes round the edges of the Bag End garden. And he remembered staining his small hands on the tart fruit of those same bushes. Both as a child, small and unknowing the special importance of the fruit to the children of Hobbick; and then later when the time came for the Faonoretti.

They were the fruits of Fãö.

Brambles. As they called them up in Hobbiton and the country near about there.

Blackberries. As they called them up in Took country and beyond.

And all the other names and everything in between he was certain that hobbits had given them in Bree, the north and beyond.

So, it was her that had captured him, and for a purpose in this land he should have already guessed at – but it was like a fog had held him back. He couldn't understand what she had planned, nor why she chose to do it in the first place. Also escape, how was he going to escape from the hobbit equivalent of a god?

The fox sniffed and turned her back on him, as if disgusted that he even had to think the question before he knew the answer.

Because in truth he did know the answer, to his escape at least. It was held in his own first delusions, in the webs of that great fat beast called Shelob. He had killed her, burned her up good and proper.

And he did the same thing with his bramble chains, now.

But here, in this place of non-reality the power felt more. Not just a brief flash of pain and searing heat in his chest, no it was all encompassing and warm. And good and right and…and…and him, his whole and his being. This was Samwise Gamgee in the very essence of his core.

He wasn't just a Silmaril made mortal.

He was a mortal made a Silmaril.

With all the power that those two totals held.

Yes, one day this body would grow old and die but his spirit never would.

And perhaps, just perhaps this brief trespass into his people's netherworld would be the last and only time, any part of him ever stepped a foot near here again.

The brambles fell away, and Sam landed back on his feet in front of the fox, who twitched her tail approvingly.

'Fine,' said Sam after catching his breath from the force of the fall. 'If this is my last time here, then I've got no time to waste anymore. Show me what you came here to show me, and let me be done with it.'

And the fox seemed to smile at that – a rather hobbit like smile for a fox – and the voice in Sam's head said: 'I already have'. And then the fox disappeared into the thick undergrowth of the forest all around them.

Sam stood there locked between bemused – which made him want to laugh – and not a small amount of rage which he couldn't quite place the reason for. After all she promised him no great lecture or reward if he freed himself. But perhaps he had expected for her to just reveal the reason he had been brought here in the first place – other than a cruel trick by one of the Ganymen on the Turtle-fish's back.

But time passes all emotions eventually, and soon Sam realised that grieving the lost chance for an answer wasn't going to help him find a new one. And before his eyes the path was suddenly visible again. He took a deep and calming breath, and then started to make his way down the mountain again.

As he walked down the mountain, the trees around him began to fade; then the grass, and the undergrowth, until at last there was nothing but the mountain and the slight gravel of the path under Sam's feet.

It was eerily similar to another mountain Sam once tred upon.

No, no, he told himself, it was not like Mount Doom at all – Mount Doom was a terrible place, filled with fire, and orcs, and pain. This mountain was nothing like that, it was just a long stretch of rocks slowly slopping in a downward trajectory.

And yet the feeling, that terrible feeling of familiarity wouldn't leave him.

Sam tried to pretend it wasn't there, but something kept stopping him from shrugging it aside.

A small little voice, in the back of his head.

'What are you doing here Samwise Gamgee? This is not a place for you?'

And then the former gardener stopped in his slow and plodding tracks; because that was not a voice that came from his own head. That was a voice out here.

It seemed at first to come from the air around him, but even in a place like this, surely that could not be so.

No, surely the owner of that voice must be behind one of the rocks that Sam passed. And yet he didn't want to look, better to stay on the path said his sensible side. No point making it this far down the mountain, only to be murdered so close to the bottom.

Well, he corrected himself internally, what he assumed must be close to the bottom of the mountain.

'Wrong,' said the voice from all around him.

'We're only halfway through with this little game of ours, Samwise son of Hamfast and Bell. So long to walk yet, why don't you lay down in the middle of the road and go to sleep.'

Sam shook his head and tried to pretend that he didn't hear the voice at all.

But the voice would not be so easily ignored.

'That's what you're best at after all, lying down in the middle of the road, of your life, while everything else spins on without you.

It was like the voice had plucked his most desperate, darkest thoughts straight from his lowest moments.

'Sam Gamgee, the little boy that couldn't save his father.' Cooed the voice, somehow getting all the louder the quicker Sam moved down the mountain. 'The son that cursed his mother to a lifetime of sickness and insanity. Samwise the servant who couldn't protect his master on a long road up a mountain. Sam the husband that's never there. Sammy the father that abandons his children. Tell me bearer of all these names and more, what exactly are you good for?'

'Shut up,' said Sam at last. He tried to ignore the vile words, but sometimes… sometimes things were just too much for even him to turn away from.

The voice laughed.

'Shut up he says, how very articulate. You would think a friend of kings, and lords and Tooks would have a more elegant tongue – but then what am I but the child of a mother of the three tribes. I should know very little of fancy words, for mother Magda used none when raising me.'

Mother Magda, that name Sam knew well from his father's tales of the Ancestors. Mother Magda and her Elven lover had three children together: their son Fallowhide, and their daughters Stoor and Harfoot. The leaders of what would become the three tribes of the Western Hobbits of Middle Earth. Was it one of them that spoke so harshly to Sam now, he couldn't say why, but he didn't think so.

After all what had they to do with him?

The Gamgees had no Fallowhide blood in their veins and as for Stoor and Harfoot, well, aye there might be a little bit of both in those kind hearts and hard heads of his line, but he might as well have a visit from the hobbit ancestors of the north for there was as much of their blood in his veins as there was the old western kind.

No, this voice had far too intimate knowledge of him and his people to be any such distant ancestor – and besides the three tribes were not the only descendants of Mother Magda. She'd had another child, in the time before the world had turned round and the waters of the ocean had risen up and drowned her first husband, and most of their children. One child of the first union had been spared.

How did the phrase go again?

Mother Magda and her Blarney Son.

It made sense, didn't it? Rosie and her kin had been students of the Blarney Son's magic, the Sons of the Blarney had welcomed the Gamgees to the East themselves, and well Sam had left his eldest boy in their care. Why wouldn't the Blarney son come to him in the land of the Ancestors, in the land of the dead? And after all that Sam had done, why wouldn't he hate him?

Suddenly a wall of flame surrounded the miserable hobbit, and the voice that had been hunting him so effectively cried out then, in a laughing, taunting manner.

'Hate you? Why I hate nothing, Gardener! But if hatred is what makes you feel comfortable than hatred and pain is what I shall provide. Now here's a game, and only the worthy shall see its end. The fire is high and hot as all Mordor, so listen to my warning well, son of the Gardener. Find your way to the truth and walk through these walls of flame unharmed. But sink into denial and misery, and all manner of things which are neither entertaining for me to watch or for our readers to read, and you will die here with no body for that wife of yours to bury.

'Now come on boy, make your choice quickly for I'm not known for my patience. Which shall it be, death or life? Choose now, or I'm choosing for you.'

And suddenly there really was fire all around him. A great wall of fire of blue and green, and purple and all the colours that fire should never be.

And for a moment Sam stood there, almost too afraid to think let alone make any kind of decision and yet…and yet what choice was there? Either he kept walking, or he died here and now, burning in the fire.

Which really wasn't a choice at all.

So, he walked forward.

He walked forward and he felt nothing.

No pain.

No heat.

No anything.

It was almost as if the fire that had surrounded him did not even exist at all.

Or he corrected himself, might as well not have for him.

He stepped out of the fire into the beautiful woods of the Ancestors that he thought he had left behind so long ago.

He could not hear the voice in his head anymore, and for a moment he thought he had left it behind too.

But such things were not meant to be.

For suddenly the voice was there, and it laughed again.

Wildly.

Maniacally.

Like only the truly mad could.

And then a great ball of purple light came racing towards Sam's head and in his mind, he could hear the voice screaming. Screaming at him to defend himself or die, or maybe both, he hadn't decided yet.

Sam didn't really understand at first, but on instinct he stretched out his hands to try and shield some part of himself from the blast. And with a wave of warmth suddenly he was surrounded by that golden light, that same light that had consumed Shelob. That same light deep in his chest. That same light that had driven his mother mad, that was slowly driving a wedge between him and Rosie, that same light hidden deep within each of his children's eyes.

It was this light, formed now into a glowing barrier, that protected him – that stopped each of the Blarney Son's attacks before they could even reach him. Nothing got through, not the lightning, not earthquakes, not the wailing of the wind and most certainly, not even the ash that he made fall from the sky.

Nothing could touch Samwise, hidden under his dome of light.

Nothing that was, except the cry that he heard suddenly from out beyond the line of trees.

That cry… it was Rosie's cry.

Sam ran through that forest.

He couldn't stop, not while he could still hear her voice. Screaming, screaming in pain, in agony, screaming…screaming for him.

He didn't even notice that the trees were parting, because in his heart it didn't matter.

Because in his eyes all he could see was her, lying on a bed in the middle of a field, screaming – screaming because the baby was coming. He didn't know which baby, for this was the land of dreams and what could be's. It could be a memory of a child, one of the many they had had over the years; it could be the one she carried in the waking world right now, or for all he knew it could be another. A child not yet even conceived in the land of mortals.

Whatever the case, it didn't matter because she needed him. For once she needed him to be there, and for once he was not going to disappoint her.

Not this time.

He reached her side, and their hands clenched together as they hadn't done since they were very young hobbits indeed.

She looked at him then in shock and almost wonder.

'Sam,' she said, her voice surprisingly firm despite the pain that seeped into every word she spoke. 'Sam, it won't end – it won't ever end.'

She didn't ask him to help, or to make it end, as they both knew already that such a task was beyond him at least as far as labour pains were concerned. But a thought struck him then, a peculiar thought that he was surprised had not occurred to him before. At least here, in the land of the Ancestors.

Because this was the land of the Ancestors, and they…they were supposed to protect you, weren't they? And all right, so Sam could understand why they hated and dismissed him – but Rosie, Rosie was all hobbit and she…she deserved their help. No, more than that – she was owed their help.

And so, Sam knew what he had to do then.

He let go of Rosie's hand, stepped from her birthing bed, and tore his eyes away from her horrified ones – Sam turned and ran back into the forest.

Ran back to the sound of the Blarney Son's laughter.

Because Rosie deserved better than what he could give her now, in this place, she deserved the Ancestors help. And if there was one Ancestor who owed Rosie his allegiance more than any of the others, it was him – it was the Blarney Son. Because her people, her kin were his followers, magic users each and every one of them. And as his reckoning goes, like doesn't turn its back on like.

'Blarney Son!'

He screamed into the laughing silence of the woods around him.

'Blarney Son!'' He screamed again.

'Fine, if you want to kill me than have at it, I'll stand here, and I won't even try to fight. You can kill me with all the magic you have, or just a simple blow from your hand and I won't raise no shield, or fist to defend myself. All I ask is that you make her pain stop, please make her pain stop.'

And then the laugh started up again, as if Sam had just told it a very funny joke indeed.

'Save her he says.'

Mocked the voice.

'Make her pain stop. Bah, what do you know of pain, boy? You've barely lived one of your many lifetimes, come to me in the next one and we'll talk of pain. Come to me when arrows hit you in the back and it won't stop bleeding no matter how hard you scream. Come to me when your future wives, and husbands and children grow old and die while you live on, and on, and on again. Always alone, always separate from the ones you love. Come back to me when you've lived through all that and we'll talk of pain.'

As the voice lectured him Sam strode through the wood, shaking in rage, and as it did so something became clearer to him. The fact that it was not a voice following him at all, but a person.

At first the thing following him from tree to tree, looked nothing more than a shadow. A shadow on the stone, a shadow on the wall – and yet it became more than that, it was a whole hobbit. With a fine long head of hair, a heavy ridged forehead and gripped in his hand, a spear that almost looked like – if you weren't properly paying attention – a walking stick.

But Sam wasn't so blind anymore and he knew what he was looking at.

The Blarney Son.

It was the Blarney son that was coming out of the trees now, smiling in a vicious manner. It was the Blarney son who was shaking his ridged head, and tinkling the bells on the jester's hat that he wore.

Now that he could see him in the full light of the stars, Sam realised that it wasn't just the hat, the Blarney son wore the full Fool's outfit. Hobbits weren't generally fools. Hobbit lords and monarchs didn't keep such a position – not now, not even in long days past when their numbers where even greater than they are now – and human kings didn't generally ask hobbits to fill any position in their court. Even that of a fool.

Although that weren't rightly true now was it, there was a hobbit fool in recent memory. Merry and Pippin had told him there had been a hobbit in the court of the Horse Lord King. Sam had never met him, but Merry had assured the then gardener that he was not just another one of the Took's many japes and tricks, he had existed. Probably still did exist somewhere.

Could it be?

The very same…you did hear stories of certain Ancestors of particular power stretching their magic into the mortal realm, and taking on physical forms once again. And the Blarney Son, well he was surely just mad enough to think the job of a fool was a funny disguise indeed.

'Not funny,' said the Blarney son. 'Hilarious. I'd give you a little jape, and a song to let the reader know that the fool they saw in chapter 37, and the great magical Blarney Son is indeed the same, although I'd imagine it should be obvious by now. However, you have not the time to waste, and our writer has not the patience today for such frivolity.'

He laughed again, but more insanely this time.

'I do not think that is a word young Gamgee, but regardless whether I wanted to help you or not I could not.'

'Why not?' Said Sam focusing hard on his mission again.

'Because you stupid boy, this is the land of no reality – you see not your actual wife in pain, but her veil self, her dream self. And dreams need not a healer, or a magic spell to make the pain go away. Nay, it is a metaphor for life – and what does Rosie Cotton need in real life? What can a healer, or a medic, or nursemaid not give her – what in fact can only you, her husband give her at this very moment in time?'

And in Horror, Sam sunk to his knees – because of course things weren't what he thought they were. Of course, Rosie didn't need a healer or a midwife to make the pain stop, or the child come any quicker – this was a dream, and in dreams Rosie's pain needed only one thing and one thing only. She needed him, she needed him and he had left her. Left her just like he had so many times before. With the quest, with his duties – and there was Rosie left behind again, alone, and screaming from the labour pains of a baby that would never enter the world.

Because none of it was real.

In a mad panic Sam wrenched himself from the ground and started to run to the tune of the Blarney Son's laughter again. He ran back to the glade, to where he should have found Rosie – but it was too late, the bed, and the hobbit mother were already gone.

In frustration Sam screamed. Why was this always the way of it? Why did he always leave her behind, always caught up in his own head? He wrenched at the hair on his head, and ground his teeth, and stamped his feet but nothing helped. No act of frustration or repentance he performed would bring the dream Rosie back to the glade. And back to him.

Because and this was the truth that he suddenly knew with the utter sincerity of the dead – it wasn't the children, and their births, that were doing Rosie in. Because Rosie loved her children, each and every one of them – bearing perhaps those that had murdered their own siblings, but that was just common hobbit sense. And their light might be a terrible thing, but it was something that the world needed right now, and it had never scared her. In fact, her true fear wasn't having another baby at all – despite the many they still had, and the pain still lurking in both their hearts from the children they had lost – but rather that she'll be left all alone to raise them.

And there kneeling in that dream glade, in the middle of the land of the Ancestors, in the middle of the land of the dead, Sam decided something. Deep within his heart, deep within the chest cavity where if he had been a regular hobbit a mortal soul would have resided. He resolved there and then that he would not let Rosie's fears, her nightmares, take hold in their own waking world. Sam resolved there and then, to be there for Rosie and their children, all their children no matter how many more they had, or whatever else the world might throw at them. He wouldn't let them down again.

Tears still stained his cheeks when Gamgee left that glade, in that sunless day of the dead. For as every good hobbit knows, the sun is an unnatural thing in our waking world and the dead will not stand for it.

As for the living, they have shorter memories and Sam already missed the heat against his skin. But he didn't let himself think of it, didn't let himself think of anything back in the sun filled land of the living. He should, he knew that deep down that was really why he was here – to understand the world back there. But he already knew what he had to do when he reached the bottom of this Blarney cursed mountain. He knew already that he had to step up, as a father, as a husband, as a…everything. He didn't want to think about how to do that, or what such a declaration might entail in its reality. Anyway, right now it didn't matter, nothing did if he didn't reach the bottom of that mountain; and he couldn't do that if he was stuck inside his own head.

He had to stay focused and so he blocked out the worries, and the second guesses that usually filled up his awake mind. He kept his thoughts instead anchored to the present, anchored to putting one foot in front of the other. He was so focused on that, on that one physical act that he didn't even really notice proper like, when he left the woods behind. When the land changed to something closer to scrub land, rocky alcoves covered in thick hatches of heather and dried grass. To Sam it wouldn't have really mattered even if he'd been looking.

To Sam Gamgee nothing mattered to him, nothing that is except his family.

And that, dear reader, is when he heard it.

When he heard him.

The young hobbit had black curls, the dark skin of their more southern cousins, and the unnatural green eyes of Sam Gamgee's bloodline. And he was sitting on a flat rock at the side of the road, weeping most pitifully. It reminded Sam almost of wee Merry and Pippin, when they'd been running wild, not looking where they were going, and then were so very angry when they would inevitably trip and injure themselves. The boy was quite a bit older than Sam's sons of course, old enough to know better perhaps – but not quite what normal sensible hobbits would call all grown either. Young enough to spark the parental instincts deep within Sam Gamgee's chest.

Young enough to make the hobbit father stop in his plodding, and methodical path down the mountain, and crouch down beside the boy and ask…

'Lad, are you okay?'

In retrospect it was a slightly stupid question. Of course no hobbit that cried like that was okay, but it was a subject that had to be breeched some way, and it might as well be the simplest.

And the boy looked up at Sam then, looked up at him as if he were the thickest, silliest hobbit that the ilk of Hobbick had ever produced. Sam didn't let it bother him, after all he was used to such looks from his nearest and dearest. Why should one from a stranger disturb him?

'No.' said the young hobbit with an air of finality in his voice. 'I'm not okay at all, my foot is snapped, my ankle is broken, and I can't walk anymore. And just when walking was finally worth something.'

It was an odd thing to say, but then Sam supposed it was an odd place. He crouched down before the weeping hobbit and bent his head to examine the much maligned ankle.

'Now see here, lad.' Said Samwise in his most paternal, comforting voice. 'There's no need to weep so, why this foot's not even broken.'

The hobbit on the rock sniffed pathetically and looked at the older hobbit curiously. 'It's not? But the pain, the pain that went through it when I tumbled, it's so much surely that must mean that something is wrong.'

'Wrong maybe,' said Sam looking back up into the lad's tear-stained face. 'But not broken, it's only a light sprain. A bit of rest, something to bind the foot, and you'll be as fine as a spring morning.'

This however, did not seem to comfort the boy at all – for he began to take up an even keener wail as if the whole world might suddenly stop, or worse yet die now that he had to stay off his foot for a couple of weeks at best. Sam was a bit flummoxed he had to say, and he tried to damp down his own irritation, such a big hobbit crying and whining over a little sprained ankle, just weren't proper.

He didn't say so, but perhaps he didn't need to – perhaps the scowl on his face said it all the better for the boy scowled back, ceasing his wails, and began to explain his own misery.

'I was supposed to be helping them, you understand?'

Sam didn't, but didn't think such a revelation would be pertinent to the boy at this moment.

'We all were, my family, we…well I can't really explain, not using words but we were supposed to be helping them, saving them – bring them home and up to a better place. It was my chance to show my mother that I wasn't just a…coward, or weak-willed child. I could have shown her that not only was I an adult, but a powerful hobbit. One that instead of babying, she had to respect. But now that's all gone I suppose, and all because I wasn't looking where I was going. Stupid. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!'

He started smacking his head, possibly hard enough to leave a bruise if Sam hadn't grabbed his wrist, and given the youngster a stern frown as he said.

'Now see here, me lad. There's no need for any of that, I'm sure yer mum understands you tried – and there ain't no shame in falling and failing – that's how we learn, ain't it?'

His words made the boy smile and shake his head sadly.

'Oh, kind sir, you sound just like my grandfather when you speak so.'

'Then he be a wise hobbit,' said Sam.

'The wisest,' said the boy with a proud little grin. But then his face fell, and he shook his head most woefully. 'But it's not just my own pride or my mother's good opinion in danger if I fail today, sir. I can't tell how many will die if I can't stand and make my way on my own.'

If this had been another place, a place where the walls of reality existed at all - Sam might have been a tad sceptical at that. But he supposed then again, how many would have died if Mr Frodo had fallen and been unable to finish his journey. He doubted this lad carried an evil ring anywhere on him, but such needs did exist, and why couldn't this hobbit's journey be just as important. At least to the people that would die otherwise. He wanted to help, to make things better…but how…

And then, almost as if he had no true control over them anymore, Sam placed his hands on top of the young hobbit's twisted ankle. He closed his eyes then, and let the lights dancing behind his eyelids distract him from just how big of a fool he must be making of himself. And then, as if brought forward by that disparaging thought, a heat began to form under Sam's palms. Not the normal kind of warmth that came from most everybody's hands, but a burning, cloying kind of heat. The kind of heat that made you think of lights in the sky, or fires late at night. The kind of heat that you didn't expect to feel coming out of your own hands.

The boy gasped, bringing Sam back down from the pain and yanking his eyes open again. He looked down as he lifted his hands away from the boy's ankle. It was healed, fully and completely. Almost like it had never been damaged or hurt at all.

'Blarney,' said the lad. 'You really are like my grandfather.'

For a moment Sam felt like dismissing the compliment, as he so often did, with a shake of the head and a shrug – but stopped halfway through committing such an act, as it felt somewhat rude. After all, if he tossed it aside this time, he wouldn't just be dismissing his own accomplishments but the one's of this fellow's grandfather, who he clearly held in high esteem. So, in the end all he said in reply was.

'Thank ye kindly, I should be so honoured.'

And the boy smiled, and as Sam helped him to his feet he said.

'But where are my manners sir, I've entirely failed to introduce myself. Elfstan Fairbairn sir, at your eternal service.'

He gripped Sam's hand and began shaking it enthusiastically. The name felt important somehow, but not yet, it was as if that name, the name Elfstan Fairbairn would mean something to Sam in years to come. But right now, all it was, was a name. And if Sam had been raised to believe one thing, it was that it was rude to not give your name to some one who had so freely offered his own…and so he said.

'Samwise Gamgee, at yours.'

The boy's hand felt back to his side, and he looked at him with a slackened confused expression.

'That can't be…,' said the young hobbit. 'I don't understand…you…you …you're dead.'

Sam was just about to snap that he was not, and note that it was very rude indeed for someone to imply that he was, when a thick mist began rolling down the mountain. It hissed in between the two hobbits and separated them, hiding the young scallywag entirely from Sam's sight. And then as fast as it had come, the mist vanished, leaving Samwise Gamgee standing on that mountain, alone again, naturally.

Alone on a mountain Sam stood and looked hard at the place the boy should have been – perhaps it shouldn't have been a surprise that he was just another trick of the mountain, no more real than Rosie's shade before him. And yet something about that encounter felt important. It felt like it was supposed to mean something, teach him something. The only question was…what exactly?

As he thought on this question Sam began to casually make his way down the mountain's path again. What had the lad told him? That he resembled his grandfather? Well, there were a lot of those abouts, so Sam felt it only the odds that he resembled some poor sod's grandfather. That he was supposed to be dead? Well, who wasn't in this new world for the dead – Sam was always a little amazed that anyone yet still drew breath in that once great land? So, what had he learned?

The fact that if he put his hands on a person he could heal them, maybe but time would only tell if he could recreate that affect when he reached the bottom of this mountain and found his way home again.

So lost in these thoughts and contemplations that, Sam was completely blind to the unsettling mist that rolled now down around his feet again. Blind to its chill, or the tremble that went through his body unconsciously as the icy thing began to climb up his legs.

He just walked on, deeper into that swirling mist.

In fact, it wasn't until he began to hear voices – strange far-off sounds of children's laughter and men shouting that he even casually glanced up at his surroundings. And by then the whole mountainside was lost to that pea-soup mist.

Where…where was he?

Through the mist Sam could see shadows, shadows of children running and playing. Two girls he thought there was, they giggled and begged their papa to come catch them. To come catch them. But they spoke in a language that right now, Sam knew, did not exist. Because these were the spirits, the souls of hobbits that had yet to be born. And the earth on which they ran and played and frolicked- well that was quite a different place to Sam's own.

In fact, as he continued his way down the mountain path, he could see many such shades, the shades of all those who shared kinship with Hobbick. Hobbits, Halflings, the occasional man who must have been very special indeed and for some reasons Goblins too. Odd, what had they to do with the children of Hobbick? Some he could hear, angry, pleased, whatever you could imagine, they felt it. But he couldn't see their faces proper like – because these were the shades of people that Sam realised now, he would never meet. Not in this life anyway.

He passed a shade of a large cat, that turned into a girl – and he could hear her weeping, but he could not reach out and comfort her. For she would never know the face of Samwise Gamgee. Not as he was now, though he was certain that their souls would meet sometime in this long existence of his.

He would meet them all sometime: the goblin child, the wizard in the castle, even the half-breed man with eyes the colour of old dollar bills. Not that Sam knew what old dollar bills were, but it was a description that felt right with him as he glanced at the shade of the man sitting at the fine oak desk. Yes, one day he would meet them all…but only if he completed his mission in this life.

And it was that fact, that pure and simple sliver of knowledge, that moment of understanding of not only why he had been brought here, to this strange and confusing place, but why he had been born in the first place. The plan to the universe had been slipped off its intended path, to a new one which could lead only to death. His purpose, his point was not to right that wrong, push the world back to the old path, no his purpose was to push it to a third option. An option that perhaps would let that future, the future he had only glimpsed to exist at all.

And that is the moment, dear reader, when Sam finally stepped off that mountain.

And woke up safe within the arms of his wife and children.

It would be a lie to say that all Sam Gamgee's problems had been solved after that strange and eventful dream – simply too unrealistic, even for a fantasy story. But it was noted by many that were around and near him at the time, that after that night there was a greater sense of peace to the peculiar hobbit. Less conflict within his heart – which is certainly a step towards happiness, if not quite happiness itself.

That morning, while many of the others partook in the morning feast the Ganyman had prepared for them Sam Gamgee sat back in his chair, and smiled at his family. He smiled at the toddlers smooshing bananas into their mouths. He smiled at his wild little sons throwing toast at one another's heads. He smiled at his sister-in-law and brother who were chastising their own sons for mimicking their cousins bad behaviour. He smiled at his daughter Rose, who rolled her eyes at her younger siblings antics. And he smiled wide at his wife, who fed their youngest babe at her breast, while her eyes roamed hungrily over the feast before her. Still not yet decided what she would break her own fast with.

The only one he didn't see was…ah there she was, his eldest Elanor Gamgee sitting a few seats down chatting animatedly to a boy from – judging by the bright orange of his cloak – one of the southern hobbit regions. Sam didn't recognise him on sight, but there was something about him that reminded Sam of the hobbit from his dream. The one that had hurt himself so badly. It wasn't the dark southern complexion, nor the tight black curls – many southern hobbits had those – no it was his smile. Bright, and calming, and with a little twist to the mouth that said he was listening to every word you were saying. And right now that smile was being directed straight at his daughter.

Sam leaned over and tapped on his wife's shoulder. Her eyes snapped to his face impatiently and she said.

'Yes, what is it, Sam?'

And Sam said

'That lad, the one our Elanor is chatting to - what's his name?'

And she looked over and smiled at the now giggling pair.

'Oh, that's Fastred Fairbairn – his father's a Ganyman from one of the Crystal cities of the south.'

Sam sat back, a large smile on his face – ah yes, it all made sense now.

'Why? Are you going to become all over protective and make a fuss - she's going to start growing up you know, no matter what we have to say about it.'

Sam shook his head, plaintively.

'No, my love, just wanted to know.'

Rosie nodded suspiciously and turned to reach out at last for one of the many omelettes on offer before her.

And Sam smiled, feeling for the first time in a long while that all was right in the world. At least for a little while.