A/N: Everyone reading this pretend it's still Epiphany and I haven't missed the twelfth day of Christmas. Hey, if I were Orthodox I'd be right on time!
Merry Christmas, all, and here's the annual fic! The title is from Lady Maisery's "Snow Falls", and a number of their songs appear on this fic's playlist, which you can find as "trust in tomorrow" on Spotify, or by going to the fic's AO3 mirror, which has a lot more links in it. The cover image is "Winter Sunrise", by S. R. Badmin. No major warnings apply in this one, but Frodo is very depressed towards the start of the fic and later contemplates (non-suicidally) a scenario in which he dies, so tread carefully.
A word to the pedants: Frodo wears boots here because a) it's snowing and b) the hobbits of the Eastfarthing did tend to own boots for wading; he also says "O God" despite the Shire's lack of organised religion, because I couldn't find a phrase with the exact same semantic associations. Pretend he's saying something vaguely equivalent in Westron.
Happy reading!
It was the third of the Yule-days, and Frodo Baggins was escaping Brandy Hall.
He dashed off the note as quickly as he could: it was not in his best handwriting. That was all to the good, since it concealed any shake in his hand. Out for a walk. Back before dinner. – F. Then he pulled on his coat and boots, grabbed a ring of keys hanging by the wall, and set off before he could think better of it.
It was his own good luck that he hadn't run into a stray Brandybuck cousin on his way out. Then again, this was not the main entrance to Brandy Hall, nor the second- nor even the third-best. Brandy Hall was a maze of tunnels – a rabbit-warren, Frodo remembered his father calling it. (It was one of his only memories of that firm, clipped voice: it ended with the warm sound of his mother's laugh.) In summer the place would be alive with cousins, swarming through each and every corridor, but in winter they were more likely to keep to the large central rooms where there might be a fire, stories, or – best of all – food.
He knew those were the things his cousins had had in mind for him, too, when they invited him. They were the things he had had in mind when he and Sam had talked it over – for of course Sam must come too, if Frodo did. Might be good for you, my dear, Sam had said, sat that night by the fireside. To get away from these old walls and spend Yuletide somewhere a mite less – quiet.
To leave Bag End, where memory – of the days before, and the endless new stretch of days, now – seemed to have sunk into the walls, and return to the home of his childhood for the Yule-days. A place with abundant stores of relations to accost him, of food to be offered to him, of games for him to be dragged into and tasks to be given him whether he would or no. At the time, Frodo thought, it had sounded like a tonic.
But it hadn't been one; or else his ailment was beyond such remedies. He had only just let himself form the thought today, and could not begin to think how to express it to Merry, dear fellow – or worse, to Sam.
He closed the door behind him, and stepped into the snow. It was bitterly cold: at once he found himself blowing on his hands to warm them, and then quickly shoving them into his pockets. He had not thought to bring gloves.
A strange three days it had been – a horrible three days. He played games readily, and carried out his tasks agreeably, and spoke politely to his relatives (or as politely as was usual for Brandybucks), and all the while he was listless inside. The first day he had been hopeful. The second he had tried his best, but there had been a kind of creeping dread, growing in him as evening drew on, at how easy it was for him to speak and act as though nothing was wrong. He laughed without humour, sang without feeling, looked on without wonder. The world swept past him in a slow grey tide, drained of sunlight.
The world outside had very little sunlight to offer either, now that he was out in it. Cloud blanketed the sky, the dull whitewashed grey that meant there had been snow and would be snow again. But that was almost comforting, or some cold cousin to comfort, at least. At least this landscape was grey straightforwardly, and did not pretend to be anything else. It was the strange double vision he hated, the pleasant surroundings and the horror underneath. The table straining with food and the empty unhungry feeling inside.
The ground, too, was grey-white with snow, some trodden, most not. Occasionally a bold, spiky hump of dead grass broke through it. The air was misty with the sight of his breath before him. It was really not a pleasant landscape at all. Frodo marched doggedly onwards into it, like a man tired and lost and too proud to ask directions.
The snow was deep enough that he could not see the uneven ground beneath his feet, and when he stepped wrongly the impact juddered through him. His ears – why had he come out without a hat? – were beginning to hurt with cold. Nevertheless he trudged on. Stumbling, biting his lip against the pain in his extremities, these things jarred him. They kept him awake.
He wanted very badly to be awake. It was why he had forced himself out of his guestroom in Brandy Hall, where he had been sitting still and quiet, as he was wont to do these days. The morning and half the afternoon had passed in a sort of stupor as he sat by the window, his limbs like lead. Then all of a sudden he had wrenched himself out of his chair and fled, like a hunted animal putting on a last burst of speed.
He would not have been allowed to pass the afternoon that way if Merry had been there – Merry always rousted him out of this mood, dragging him off to do one thing or another – but Merry had ridden away yesterday to go and find Pippin at Great Smials, and would not be back until tomorrow. They had planned it that way, that Pippin should begin the Yule-days in Tuckborough, and then be visited and fetched by Merry to finish them in Buckland. All the four together once more. Like the visit to Brandy Hall itself, Frodo thought blackly, it had seemed like a good idea at the time.
He would never have been allowed to sit still that way if Sam had been at hand: Sam would have talked him out of his chair as if taming a wild thing, coaxed him into the kitchen, put food into his hands… but Sam was out, too. He had been called out to help one of the postmen, whose heavy-laden beast had gone lame early in the day, and had not yet returned.
I would not have been driven to this, if he had, Frodo thought, and did not know whether to feel horrified, or bleakly glad, or hate himself for thinking it. The thought of being a burden to Sam was a familiar horror, a thought that seemed to approach with a hood of weighted cloth, to envelop him and bow his head.
He was rather worried that one of the others would catch him on the road: Sam, most likely and most horribly, but there was always the possibility Merry and Pippin would have left Great Smials early rather than spend another day with Pippin's sisters. The idea made him wish more keenly than ever to be invisible again.
But none of them did pass him. Indeed nobody did: the roads were as empty as if he were the only creature alive. There was no reason for any other hobbit to come out, really, at this time of year, and certainly not in this weather. The fields were frozen and silent, and the wind was beginning to pick up, raking its long nails over the skin of any traveller fool enough to be out. Frodo, knowing himself a fool, trudged stubbornly on.
He could not have said how long he walked for. The light bled slowly, invisibly out of the sky, which remained deceptively pale in its blanket of cloud. His feet, remembering other and worse winters, found a kind of rhythm in their stumbling. His face and hands forgot what it felt like to be warm. Occasionally a black, swaying tree would appear by the side of the road, cutting across the sky with its bare branches. But even that felt all one with the white landscape, as the pause between verses is part of the song. And the road stretched on, verse after interminable verse, never changing…
O God, he thought, suddenly: for that same lightless dread had taken hold of him – or had never left hold at all, but had slowly been tightening its grip all this time. The landscape was passing by him like a dream, endless and empty. He wasn't awake at all, but walking in a waking sleep, the same waking sleep in which he had sat at the window. His ears hurt, his face hurt, his nose ran – his hands even in their pockets were so cold he was tempted to blow on them again – his legs ached, their bones jarred by the uneven ground, and the wind was creeping into his coat. He felt these things, and yet he did not feel them. He knew he was miserable; and yet he did not feel the misery in his heart, and it had no power to move him. He might walk for a day, or a year, in this cold, and still never think of turning around and starting for home. His legs would keep going regardless, as they did in dreams. As they had before, not so long ago.
There is no escape, he thought, in despair: and then he found himself looking up at the Hedge.
A long walk it had been indeed, if it had brought him this far from Brandy Hall. The Hedge loomed over him, a black, thorny silhouette against the snow. Its branches shone with a chilly gleam: after a moment he realised it was the light catching on their cobwebs, which were frozen solid. Before him lay a brick-walled tunnel which crawled beneath the Hedge into darkness. His feet had brought him, without his knowing, to the entrance they remembered.
For a moment he stood very still, caught in a strange animal stillness, his mind blank and free of argument. Then he put his hand in his pocket, and felt the keys there; and all at once – like prey diving for cover – he faced the tunnel entrance and plunged in.
The tunnel was so dark it was almost pitch black, which told him that it must be darker above, and later in the afternoon, than he had noticed. But when he came out into the Old Forest itself he almost felt he was in daylight. The snow had fallen thick and deep here, where no feet came, and the whole place was blank and white.
For a moment, Frodo felt as if he had plunged underwater. A moment later he realised why: all the sound of the wind was gone, and the woods were silent. It was an eerie silence, the sound of a place which shut the wind out but did not welcome the traveller in.
He chose a direction – there was no path – and began to walk as if he had a purpose, weaving between the trees. It was sheltered here, at least. The trees pressed close above him, their branches interlocking, bent like old men beneath the sky they shut out. The snow was deep enough that in places he was all but wading in it, and he found himself relying on them, grasping at an outlying branch or a nearby trunk, for balance.
Still, he did not like them. In this dead stillness they seemed like sentries who had stood in one place so long they had turned to stone, like the stories he had heard Buckland hobbits tell of the Dripping Well. Or perhaps pillars, all that remained of the long, winding corridors of some half-ruined building… A building that did not like the living, in which he was not welcome; a place of the dead, like the Barrow-downs. Go back, they seemed to say, leaning over him and gesturing with their knotty branches. Yet he pressed on; whether because of listlessness or stubbornness, he could not say.
The ground became more and more uneven beneath him, and climbed ever upward, so that at times he had to hunch beneath the gnarled, interlocked canopy of branches. Early on he had caught a flash of the stream he remembered, frozen and unmoving; but by now he had long since left it behind. There was not a hint, not so much as a glimpse of movement in these snow-bound woods.
He clambered onwards, winding between black trunks with white above and white below, their shadows on the ground too sharp to be called dappled. Nothing moved; nothing changed. He felt nothing ever would. Somehow that felt different here: less like a dream, passing weightlessly, and more like something heavy, bearing down upon him until it bore him to the ground…
He blinked. Had something moved?
The next moment, something cold landed on his eyelashes. He shook his head to rid himself of it, and felt a sharp cold sensation, a wind rushing past him. Above him, a strange, muted, desolate moan sounded in the treetops.
Around him, snowflakes were falling.
They fell fast and silently, like blossom shaken from the May-tree. There was no sound when they left the branches, nor when they reached the ground – only that hollow, ragged whine of the wind above him, every now and again, never regular enough for him to expect it. He looked up and saw a glimpse of a deep, ink-blue sky above him through the trees, the colour of night. In the strange, dead pallor of the Old Forest the snowflakes shone as if the very stars were falling.
"O God," Frodo said, aloud; and then he began to stumble back the way he had come, and then at random between the trees as he realised the view behind him was as unfamiliar as the one that lay ahead. The snow in his boots, picked up from the deep drifts, was beginning to soak through his trousers until there was a piercing cold in his legs. At his collar and cuffs, the wind's bite was the bite of cold steel.
He wandered frantically, half-falling in the snow and catching himself half a dozen times at least. The shadows grew so deep in places he could not tell which parts were tree-trunks and which the dark spaces between them. Desperate, he kept going, but he knew his chance of finding his way back to the tunnel was slim and dwindling by the minute. And even if he did find the iron gates again – he realised, now – the walk to reach them from Brandy Hall had taken him hours. He would have to spend even longer trudging back again, in fast-rising banks of snow – his coat not really fit for the weather, his boots wet inside already, his hands ungloved and already frozen to the bone…
He tripped hard on a tree-root and caught at a nearby tree-trunk, whose rough bark ripped at the palm of his hand. "O God," he said again, half-bent over and breathing hard. In the sharp blue cold his eyes grew wet and red with tears.
He might die here, and not be found till Spring. That casual, abandoned note, lying in his study in Brandy Hall – how soon would they notice it? Who could even have seen him leave, through a seldom-used door off an empty corridor – and who could guess where he had walked, or how far? Who would dare enter the Old Forest to look for him?
Sam would, he thought, the thought piercing him to the heart. Sam would rush out that very night, as soon as he realised Frodo had never returned for dinner – and the next day Merry would join the search, and Pippin, all his bold friends… And that would be worse, for still they would never find him in time: there was not a hope of it. They would only find his body, cold, pale and still. If he was very unlucky, it would be Sam who would find it, and run over to it, unable to bear or believe in his death…
The thought of it almost doubled him over, sharper than any Morgul-blade. He clapped a hand to his mouth to hide a sob. I don't want to die, he thought, in a kind of laughing, sorrowing horror. What a moment to realise it. What a moment, in the midst of this killing snow, to know without a doubt that he wanted to live.
And suddenly, as if summoned by the thought, he heard a voice approaching.
He wiped his streaming eyes with the back of his hand – the tears warmed it briefly – and looked up. He could not quite hear what the voice was yet, but he thought he could make out, just over the next rise, a moving sphere of golden light. It was travelling swiftly, faster than he had thought anyone could move in snow like this.
As it came nearer, he began to catch some of the voice's words, and stood in wonder at the familiar sound:
Ho! Tom Bombadil, Tom Bombadillo!
In bare and leafless woods, by the frozen rill-oh,
Tom comes, jolly Tom, still his legs are going,
Through frost and bitter cold, though it may be snowing,
No snow hinders him, there's no wind can bite him,
No storm-cloud above has the strength to fight him!
Not when he's headed home, fast as he is able,
To food and fireside and Goldberry at the table.
Frodo stared, halfway to breaking into laughter – and then instead he began to cry out, at first hoarsely and then clear and strong: "Tom! Tom Bombadil!" And then, more fervently still: "Help!"
He had forgotten the charm Tom Bombadil had taught him, but Help was charm enough. The song broke off, and the next moment Tom Bombadil crested the rise, still in blue jacket and yellow boots, and bearing a large lantern in one hand. "What's this?" he cried. "Frodo-lad, out here in the winter? Here's no merry meeting! We must get him under roof: hands and feet are freezing." He looked at Frodo from under his bushy eyebrows and frowned: then he seemed to make his mind up about something. "Come now! Take my arm – we shall go together. Tom will bring you through the door in good time for supper."
Frodo did as he was bade, and almost as soon as he took Tom's arm he was whisked away. Or that was what it felt like: Tom seemed to be striding along as usual, and Frodo could feel his own legs moving, yet they passed through the trees as swiftly as the wind, never tiring. Indeed, they might have been the wind, so smoothly did they move over the ground. Frodo almost felt that Tom was carrying him in one hand and the lantern in the other.
In no time, or so it seemed, they came to the little grassy hill with Tom Bombadil's house set atop it. The snow before it was lit by a golden light falling from the window, so clear and bright it seemed to stand as the reverse of those sharp black shadows in the wood. It was a friendly light, and Frodo's heart lifted like a boat on a flood.
Then the door opened, and they were through it; and there was Goldberry, rising from her chair to welcome them, and she, too, looked just as she always had – like a breath of spring.
"Frodo!" she said, and came to him. Then to his shock – it would have been to his shame, if he had not been too tired and relieved to feel shame – she began helping him off with his coat, and even with his boots, which his frozen fingers certainly could not have managed.
Frodo could not even muster the words to thank her. He would have tried, but he was drinking in the sight of her silently, like a man drinking cool water after a long thirst.
At last she put a green shawl of woollen cloth round him, and ushered him into a chair near the hearth with a footstool for his feet. "There now," she said, "rest and be comforted. Here is a fire to warm us, and good walls to shut the snow out, and time enough to rest before dinner."
Frodo sat back against the chair. He seemed to see the room for the first time since he had come into it. Like its owners, it looked much the same – low and yet spacious, and warm. Candles burned on the tables; lamps shone from the ceiling. But the green earthenware vessels no longer held water lilies, but winter roses, which shone white in the gilded light; and walls and windows and hearth were decked out with branches, from which hung berries, red and white. Goldberry herself wore a green mantle over her white gown, as if for warmth, and a winter rose fastened her belt. It was a winter room, but green and warm as summer.
"Fair lady Goldberry," he said, half-asleep, "O summer in the winter!"
Goldberry laughed, a rippling laugh like the first ripple of a stream after the thaw. She went to the hearth, where a small pot hung over the fire, and ladled some of its contents into a mug which she handed to him. "Drink, dear friend," she said: "silver tongues need good drink to polish them."
Frodo drank. The drink was hot, spiced and sweet: the sweetness of apples and the heat of a candle-flame. Somehow it made him want to weep.
He tried to find his silver tongue again, to praise the drink and the giver, but it wouldn't come. "Thank you," he said, with a little sob in his throat.
Goldberry smiled at him. It was so warm and secret a smile that Frodo could hardly bear it, exhausted as he was. "Offer no thanks," she said, "but be welcome here. It is a glad thing, to have guests here at Yule-tide – though you, Frodo Baggins, elf-friend, are welcome at any time, and in any season."
Frodo took another sip of his drink. It seemed to go right to the marrow of his bones, warming them, loosening his chilled muscles. He put his head back against the chair: he was nearly asleep already. Only there was one thing missing, something still spinning in the back of his mind…
"Sam," he said suddenly, lurching forward as fear gripped his heart. Had Sam returned, had he learned Frodo was missing, was he out in the snow at this moment as Frodo sat by the fire –
But Goldberry was smiling still, the hint of a laugh in her eyes. "Fear nothing," she said. "Tom was quicker than you were. Not for nothing is he the Master! He has sent for your Sam to come to us."
Even as she spoke, Frodo heard a deep voice humming in a room nearby, sounding well-pleased with itself. Then the hums broke into a song:
Hey! come derry dol! Now it's time for baking,
Soon comes the supper-hour, pies we must be making.
Salt we'll have and spices, flour and milk and butter,
Good brown potatoes will make a tasty supper…
Frodo couldn't help it: he started to laugh. Goldberry laughed with him, and they sat in peaceful silence, drinking together. When his drink was finished Frodo put his head back and closed his eyes.
He expected to fall asleep, but he didn't, for Goldberry had started to sing. It was a sweet, high song without words, a thread running ever on, weaving in and out of the song from the kitchen as a stream might weave in and out of a woodland glade: it carried Frodo away, and he sank into the song and the crackle of the fire and the distant noises of cooking.
He woke – though he had never really been asleep – to the sound of a knock at the door, and his heart leapt in his chest.
He jumped, or really almost fell, from his chair in his haste to get up. Goldberry was before him, tripping lightly across the floor: she opened the door, and said, "Come –", and before she could finish in came Sam, with snow on his hat and in the folds of his muffler and his poor nose red and raw.
The sight of him was so dear and beautiful that Frodo couldn't find the words for it. It seemed to light him up inside like a candle-flame. He began to rush over, and Sam ran forward without even taking off his boots first and said "Mr Frodo," with reproach and relief in his eyes.
These days that address only ever meant that Frodo was in trouble: he ought to feel guilty, he knew, but he was too warm and glad and relieved to feel anything else. "Sam," he said, clutching Sam's mittened hands, "dear Sam." And the words came out clear and clean and easy, as they had not for months.
Sam met his eyes, and Frodo knew he felt it too – the same relief, the same wonder. "My dear," he said. He moved as if to hug Frodo, until he noticed (Frodo saw the moment it occurred to him) that he was all over snow, which was dripping onto Goldberry's clean floors; then he quickly stepped back, and began to divest himself of boots and coat and the rest of his outer layers.
When at last he had made himself presentable – coat hung neatly on a peg – he came forward, and took Frodo's hands in his again. They were cold compared to Frodo's, but Frodo did not care: he gripped them tightly when Sam, noticing his flinch, made to take them back.
At that moment Tom Bombadil came almost bouncing out of the kitchen. "Welcome! Welcome!" he cried. "Pie is in the oven: soon we shall be eating. Best you should get ready! Follow and I'll lead you on to bed and bathtub."
Frodo looked to Sam and saw a smile that matched his own. "We follow!" he said, and they followed Tom out of the main room, down a narrow corridor and then round a sharp turn to the left and up an even narrower staircase. Tom pulled open the door, and they stepped in after him.
He had not lied about either bed or bathtub. There was a cast-iron tub, two-thirds Sam's height at least, set before them, with steam rising from it to spill through the doorway. Behind it sat a bed, not large, but certainly a good size for two hobbits to sleep comfortably, piled high with white blankets. Frodo stepped straight in; Sam hung back a moment.
"Pardon me, Master," he said, addressing Tom, "but if you mean us to sleep here tonight, there's folks who should know about it – people we ought to send a message to, I mean, or else they'll worry for nothing."
The words sent a brief echo of guilt through Frodo, remembering all his friends at Brandy Hall, but Tom only laughed. "Never you mind it: that's all taken care of. Didn't I get word to you, wandering in the snowstorm? Word has been sent on, care of Farmer Maggot." And before either of them could thank him, he was hopping down the stairs, humming as he went.
Sam let out a familiar, rueful noise, somewhere between a huff and a laugh. "That's us told, then," he said. "And all the better for it – for truth be told, Frodo my dear, I wasn't looking forward to going out into that snow again. I don't know when I've seen such a winter before."
The words were so very Sam, they warmed Frodo as much as the drink had. "My poor Sam!" he said. "Well, you shan't go out into it again tonight."
He looked to the still-steaming bath. "Won't you come and get warm?" he said, feeling oddly nervous for no reason he could explain, and held out his hand.
Sam took it and came into the room, and they set to undressing and climbing into the tub. There was no body-shyness between the two of them – not since Mordor. But they had not bathed together like this before, though Sam would sometimes draw Frodo a bath when he was ill, or suffering his 'old complaint'. So it was a new thing to sit in the hot water together, feet touching.
It felt very new and tender, like a young shoot beneath the snow. Frodo wanted to sit still and bask in it. Cautiously, he took Sam's hand beneath the water, and felt suddenly as if he had held his breath for a long time and was only now breathing out.
Sam's hand squeezed his back, as if it, too, was glad of the touch. Then: "You didn't say your hand was hurt!" said Sam, lifting it out of the water.
Frodo laughed, glad and warm and naked, and did not think of how wet his eyes had become. "It's only a scrape," he said; "and it's my own fault for going out without gloves."
"Only a scrape, he says," said Sam, mutinously. "I know you and your scrapes." He held the hand carefully between his own, inspecting it, and carefully began lifting handfuls of warm water over it and probing it with his thumb to get the dirt out. The torn skin ached a little, under this treatment, but Frodo would not have had him stop for the world and everything in it.
"How did you find me, anyway?" he said. "Goldberry only said Tom had sent for you."
Sam did not look up: he was too intent on his task. "Now that was a strange thing," he replied. "We'd just got all the parcels delivered – the last one had to go all the way to Newbury, and you know that's a walk and no mistake – and I was about to start for Brandy Hall, being in a hurry to get back for dinner… If you'll turn yourself around, my dear, I can wash your back for you."
Frodo did as he was told, and Sam went on: "So there I was, when who should come flying up but a robin? I thought it might be hungry, in this cold weather, and I was going to look in my pockets to see if I had a crust about to give it; but it didn't want no crust. It wanted me to follow it, and it was going to get me to by hook or by crook. It pecked at my sleeve, and clawed at my coat, till I was about ready to start cursing it. Only then I saw it was trying to pull me towards the Old Forest, which wasn't too far by then, and I thought to myself: There's trouble afoot. Which it was," he said sternly, "since you were."
Frodo grinned at him, and he smiled back: that warm helpless smile that always put Frodo in mind of summer.
"I'd had a strange feeling all day," Sam went on; now he sounded dreamy, half-asleep. "Sort of an uncomfy feeling, like, the way you feel when one of your socks has turned itself over on your foot. I thought it was just being away from – everyone, for so long; but when that robin came, I knew it must be something more. So I followed it, and here I am."
"So you are," Frodo said. His own voice sounded just as dreamy. "Oh, Sam, I am glad…"
He sat up, before Sam's warm hands could lull him quite asleep. "Now you'd better turn around," he said, "or they'll be calling us for dinner with your back only half washed."
But in the end they did manage to get Sam's back washed, and even to splash each other a little in play, before they were summoned for dinner. It was a bell that summoned them, ringing and sweet-tongued. They clambered out of the bath and towelled themselves – even that was a pleasure, in a house where you stayed warm even naked – and pulled their clothes back on as fast as they could. Sam insisted on doing Frodo's cuffs for him; Frodo helped him on with his waistcoat in turn.
They came down to find the table already laden with warm white bread, yellow butter, and winter greens. Goldberry was sitting in her place, surrounded by candles, her hair put up for dinner with a wooden comb. She gestured them to their seats. "Now then, good guests," she said, "ready yourselves, for the best is yet to come."
And the best did come, for a minute later Tom Bombadil emerged from the kitchen, with a wave of steam, bearing a dish of something golden-brown and fragrant. "Well now, my hearties," he said, "and you, my pretty lady! Eat well! Drink well! Tom has got the supper: no-one shall go hungry."
Nor did they. Goldberry filled their drinking-bowls with cool water, and Tom piled their plates high with the contents of the dish, which turned out to be fish pie. For a while there were no sounds at the table but those of knife, fork and plate. Frodo felt no need to speak: he was eating slowly, savouring the flavours of creamy mashed potato, leek, parsley and smoked fish. The bread was very good, too, and the winter greens as fresh and tender as any in spring. Everything tasted simply and exactly like itself.
When they had made good inroads into their food, Tom began to talk again, in his half-laughing, half-singing way. It did not take him long to draw the other three into conversation. He spoke of how to find good pine branches to adorn your windows, and the saucy way the Robin had addressed him that evening, and where he expected to find snowdrops in the spring. Somehow Frodo found himself speaking of birds he had seen from their window at Bag End, drawn into the garden by Sam's new planting there; and Sam told of a meadow he had once found full of crocuses, aflame with purple and gold. Frodo could picture it. All the old memories seemed fresh again and full of colour, even those of colourless days.
After dinner they sat at the fireside, with their feet propped on footstools, and Goldberry took up her ladle and handed round more of that hot sweet concoction. Then she began to tell stories, and hers were more wonderful and more dreamlike than any Tom had told at dinner, for they were stories of the dreams of rivers. She told them what the waters of the frozen Brandywine were dreaming of, beneath the ice; and the thoughts that drifted round their own Bywater Pool at home; and the strange fancies and fantasies of the sleeping Withywindle.
Then, when they were halfway dreaming themselves, and Sam's head – he had pushed his chair next to Frodo's – was all but resting on Frodo's shoulder, she began to sing. Her silvery voice leapt merrily like a brook leaping over stones, and soon Tom Bombadil was joining her, with a voice that sounded as if the very stones had begun to dance:
Sing waves and willow-banks, all sing together,
In warmth or winter-cold, in sweet or bitter weather!
Sam jolted awake. "That's lovely," he said: "I wish I could remember it, to write it down. But it wouldn't be the same."
"No," said Goldberry, her eyes silver-blue in the firelight: "no song is ever the same twice."
Tom Bombadil clapped his hands. "Now then, my merry lads!" he said. "The New Year is upon us, and we must sing it in."
And then they all began to sing, sometimes taking turns, sometimes singing all together. They sang Bilbo's song, When winter first begins to bite, and other, older songs of his, which Frodo had to cast his mind far back to remember. Sam remembered them too, some of them better. Tom taught them older songs still, which he said hobbits had sung in these parts time out of mind. Then Sam had an idea, and they sang the Elvish hymn, Snow-white! Snow-white!, to the Queen of all stars, as Goldberry's voice soared high above them in counterpoint.
Afterwards, Tom asked them where they had learned it. "That song's an old one," he said, "older than the singers."
Sam told Tom of their encounter with Gildor Inglorion, which seemed so long ago, now; Frodo sat silent and let him answer, knowing how dearly he remembered that meeting. "And I remember thinking how old it sounded," he finished, with that dreamy sound in his voice again. "And yet very new, if you take my meaning: but still as old as the stars themselves."
"Ah," said Tom, "but the stars change: they die and are born. Old Tom remembers – many years back now – a time before Azrubêl, as the old Kings called him: him they call Sea-lover. Tom saw when first he rose."
Frodo turned his eyes and met Sam's, glittering in the firelight. He remembered, and knew Sam was remembering, the light of that star in a glass, and the dark caves where it had saved them both.
They had been singing longer than they knew. A dying ember spat in the fireplace, and Frodo, all at once, found himself yawning. But he did not quite want to leave this room, not yet. Sam, in a well-practised manoeuvre, yawned along with him, and said gently, "I'll be off to bed, my dear. Don't you be too long."
He always said this when he meant Frodo to go to bed, whether he himself was tired or not. It usually worked, too, for Frodo did not like to keep him up.
Now, Frodo smiled and waved him off, with an obedient nod. In the same moment Goldberry got up too, to carry the pot from the dying fire back to the kitchen: and so Frodo and Tom were left sitting in the low light.
He looked at Tom. "You remember everything, don't you?" he said.
Tom nodded, his eyes almost glowing in the dim room.
"How do you bear it?"
The words came out plaintive, his voice almost cracking. Frodo felt suddenly very naked – or not suddenly, but as if he had been naked the whole evening, as if he had never put his clothes on after the bath, and only just realised. Naked in this warm house.
The glow faded from Tom's eyes. They were very gentle, when they met his. "It's a simple thing, you know," he said, "getting older. You go on. That's all there is to it, and all you need to know."
He moved his chair closer to Frodo's, and leaned forward in it. "You are very young, still! You have time to learn the rhythm of the seasons. Time to feel them, and know they are not forever: that new things come, and older things return again."
Frodo stared into the fire. Could it be that simple?
Somehow it did feel that simple, in this house – here by the hearth, with Tom Bombadil nearby, and the echo of Goldberry's singing in the air. Here it felt easy to believe that the dark things would pass, and that all the old joys were only sleeping, and would come back again, any moment… "It's easier, here," he said, very softly. "To remember things." Like songs, and the taste of bread. And the feel of water or fingertips against his skin.
"This is not the house of memory," said Goldberry's voice. Frodo glanced up: she was standing in the doorway, and her hair was down, shining around her face. "It is the house where all things are new."
She smiled at him, that bright secret smile, like spring. "And you, Frodo Baggins, will always be welcome to return here."
Frodo squeezed his eyes shut, and felt the heat of tears in the corners. Then he opened them again. He knew where he needed to be.
"Thank you," he said, "thank you, both," and got up, taking a candle to light his way – "And a happy New Year!" he added, halfway down the corridor. Their laughter followed him round the corner, and up the stairs, and into the bedroom where Sam lay sleeping.
There was a nightshirt laid out for him on a wooden chair by the bed. He did his best to change into it quietly, not wanting to wake Sam. At least Sam was a heavy sleeper: with any luck he wouldn't wake when Frodo climbed into bed by his side. As the thought came he remembered that the last time Tom Bombadil had given the four of them a bed each, and wondered why only the one, this time… He and Sam had not often slept so close together since Mordor, except when nightmares gave cause.
But when he went to get under the covers he found Sam looking straight at him, eyes bright by the light of the candle. "Frodo," he said – the simple name, a tenderer sound even than his oft-dropped My dear – and reached an arm out of the covers towards him.
Frodo climbed straight in, into the bed and into his arms, warm from the sheets. He rested his head against Sam's shoulder, feeling the rhythm of his breathing. A memory was waking in him, an old one, from the foot of Mount Doom itself. And yet here it did not hurt him: it only pierced him, sharp and very sweet.
What was it Tom Bombadil had said? That new things come…
Over the curve of Sam's shoulder, he could just see the edge of the room's one low window. The sky through it was a deep and brilliant blue, and full of stars. The storm had passed.
A/N: If you got this far, thanks for reading! A few quick notes before you go, for those interested:
- The Yule-days were the days on either side of the start of the New Year in the Shire calendar. The third Yule-day is New Year's Eve.
- For the Old Forest in winter, I picture Wistman's Wood, on Dartmoor.
- The Dripping Well refers to a petrifying well, whose mineral-rich waters give things a stony appearance - I'm sure Buckland would have one.
- Fish pie is not an entirely unusual Christmas dish - Mary Berry's mother, for instance, used to serve it on Christmas Eve. Like shepherd's pie, it has a covering of mashed potato rather than pastry.
- The pattern I picture for Sam's waistcoat is Melin Tregwynt's "Vintage Star", in the colour mint.
- Azrubêl was the Adûnaic name for Eärendil, and probably a direct calque, since both mean "Sea-lover".
- Frodo's memory from Mount Doom: "'I didn't ought to have left my blanket behind,' muttered Sam; and lying down he tried to comfort Frodo with his arms and body."
Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!