"Memory of the Ring"

The ring may be gone, but it touched him and its taint remains.  Some wounds never fully heal.  Samwise Gamgee understands this better than most; he lost the company of his dearest friend because of such wounds.  For his own troubles, the sight of Rose, the laughter of his children, or the feel of good black earth between his fingers seemed to dispel the shadows like dandelion fluff in the wind.  Now it appears as if the darkness was merely biding its time.  Rose is dead, his children grown, and his garden is no longer a balm but a burial ground of past hopes and joys.  He can barely stand the sight of it and the plants suffer without his loving touch.

His children study him with concern and whisper amongst themselves.  They have just buried their mother; must they also lose their father as well?  Only Elanor knows the whole of Frodo of the Ring's words to her father six decades earlier.  Frodo-lad and Goldilocks - Gardners in name and looks, but like their eldest sister touched by a hint of something other, have their own suspicions.  They believe their father will try to join his long-departed friend and fear what will happen to him if denied his wish.

"He's fading;" Frodo whispers to Goldilocks when she arrives from the Tookland to see their sole remaining parent.  Sam barely seems to know they are there, and Frodo whisks his sister off for a walk before the walls of the smial close in around them like a vise.  Goldilocks pauses a few steps from the front door and turns back to Bag End.  She studies the garden as critically as she studies the account books and histories in Tuckborough.

"The flowers are wilting," she notes, surprised not to have seen it when she arrived.  In her entire life, she cannot recall her father ever permitting the garden to suffer neglect.  Now weeds infest most of the beds, weeds in Master Samwise's garden.  Bits of leaves and twigs litter the ground, the paving stones are askew and it appears some of the plants are colonizing other beds.  The strawberry spills out onto the walkway, the garlic crowds the rosemary.  Goldilocks almost cries at the sight of the tangle of rosebushes to the south.  She walks up to finger a wilting bloom.  Part of her itches to prune the dead and dying blossoms, but she forces herself to suppress the urge.

"His flowers are gone," Frodo reminds her as he stoops to pluck a weed creeping in amid the night-blooming jasmine.  "And he won't let me help him."

"In the garden or elsewhere."  It wasn't a question.  The twilight paints her namesake locks red-gold and she finds herself turning west towards the sunset.  West towards the sea.  She has never seen it, never wanted to see it, but she can imagine the sound.  Her father described it lovingly in the Red Book - too lovingly for her comfort.  Then there is the curved shell on his desk that somehow captured the roar of the waves.  More perceptive than her siblings, Goldilocks long ago realized the significance of these things.  Only to Frodo did she confide her fears.  Now childhood fear is on the verge of becoming reality.

"Yes," Frodo agrees, his gaze following that of his favourite sister.  Part of him feels as though his father has already passed over the sea.  "Elsewhere."

"Do you think… he will leave us come the end of September?" Goldilocks began, her voice trembling a little.  The fine lady who manages the Great Smials as Diamond's health deteriorates is gone.  In her place is the little girl who would crawl into bed with her brother during thunderstorms.  Tell me it isn't Mount Doom, that the Ring isn't coming back to hurt Dad, she would beg.

"Hasn't he already left us?" Frodo asked softly, leaning a bit on the garden wall.  Unlike their times as children, Frodo can not assure her that it will turn out all right in the end.  "All the parts of him that matter."

Much as she wants to, Goldilocks cannot dispute that observation.

* * *

Sam has convinced himself that he cannot hear it.  It is treading on the edge of madness to believe otherwise.  Frodo completed his task; he brought the ring to Mount Doom.  Sam should know; he was there that day sixty years ago.  He saw Gollum tumble into the fire with his precious.

Its late summer and yet he feels chilled. He climbs into his bed in the Master bedroom of Bag End and shudders at the quiet and stillness. Aside from Goldilocks, the smial is empty now but for himself and his eldest lad. Frodo sent his wife and children to stay with her family for the time. What Sam does not know, but often suspects, is that the gesture was less for his peace of mind than theirs was.

He lingers in bed most of the day attempting to fend off sleep.  When he dreams, he is again young and on the Quest with his master.  Once the call of the ring was a distant sound, but omnipresent like wind or the chirp of crickets in warmer months.  Now when he falls into deep sleep it shouts to him.  It strikes him as strange that it was never so loud on the Quest, not even during those few hours when it burned on his finger as he lay outside the tower of Cirith Ungol.  It seems that his grief at Rose's passing brought some ancient and unknown defensive wall in his heart crumbling down.  He cannot reign in the darkness or his memories.  They invade the little moments of his life, but most especially his dreams when he cannot turn away.

Shelob's cave.  How many nights has he returned here?  How many nights has he again found his master crumpled on the floor, a little fly caught in the web?  He cuts Frodo loose, but he is no butterfly to emerge from his pale cocoon with wings and renewed brightness.  He is far too pale and even with his head lying on Frodo's chest; Sam cannot detect any sign of breath.  There is a far way part of him that knows this is a dream of long ago and points out that Frodo is not dead.  Nevertheless, truth does not comfort here; the pain is as real and raw as first-time reality.  Sam grieves again.

For decades he awoke with tears in his eyes and a strangled scream in his throat, the memory of the moment he believed Frodo dead was enough to propel him back to Middle Earth.  Recently, however, the dream continues.  He sees himself take up the ring.  It is so very heavy; he cannot allow himself to fathom how Frodo could ever have borne it for so long.  It weighs his mind and body like a millstone.  Every step threatens to grind him into dust.

The ring tempts and mocks him as the Orcs approach.  He isn't even aware of putting it on until the harsh Orc language makes sudden sense, like one of those picture-puzzles May was fond of that seemed to be different things when viewed from another angle.  He looks down to see the golden circle - so perfect, so precious - on his finger.  Grey gauze curtains the world around him, but he can hear the Orcs as they take Frodo away.  They sound close but with the ring, sensory input is deceptive.

The tunnel shakes and Sam fights to leave only to find not rocks but warm hands holding him down.

"Dad…" it takes a moment for his mind to register the sound of his son's voice.  He hears a second shuffling outside his bedroom door.  Goldilocks, visiting from the Tookland, with only the pale moonlight to illuminate her features, she almost looks like a tweenager.

A look passes between the two siblings that Sam does not entirely comprehend.  Frodo and Goldilocks were always the odd ducks in his nest.  If the lady's gift gave Elanor her looks, it imparted a strangeness of mind to Frodo-lad and Goldilocks.  It never surprised Sam that she had taken up with a Took, only her choice of young Faramir startled him until he allowed himself to see how well they suited each other.  She was the oak to his linden.

"You need to rest up for your trip back to Tookland tomorrow.  I'll see to him," Frodo says, shooing his sister back to bed.  The featherbed dips as he sits on the edge of his father's bed and takes his worn hand into his own.  Sam has spent a lifetime comforting Frodos.  It seems wrong somehow for a Frodo, even this Frodo of his own blood who followed him around the garden as he once followed the Gaffer, to consol him.  The roles of a lifetime suddenly reversed; in its way it is even more painful to Sam than the first time he ever saw his father as old.

"Leave me…" he croaks.  He doesn't want to see his son ruined by the poison killing him.  This Frodo is still bright.

But Frodo Gardner is as stubborn as his father is.  "I won't leave you," he whispers.  There is a long pause as Frodo murmurs soft, meaningless words of comfort in his ear.  Then he pulls away and tilts Sam's face up, forcing his father to meet his gaze.  Frodo's pale blue eyes, Rose's eyes, are resigned.  The expression is eerily similar to the one worn by another hobbit before he left the world forever.  "You're the one who will be leaving."

Sam turns away, but Frodo's voice continues.  His speech is neither as rough as Sam’s is nor as refined as the Tooks and Brandybucks.  It suits him; for this Gardner has never been troubled about being torn in two.  "Goldilocks and I think," he says quietly.  "That it's time you went to stay with the elves.  I know you've heard the call of the sea.  They won't deny the last Ringbearer."

His son is right and a part of his heart withers at the realization.  He's become a burden; was this what his master felt?  Strange how he should understand so well him now.  Tears trickle down his face and he tastes salt on his tongue.  He almost asks how Frodo knows this - Eleanor would not speak of it without his blessing - but says nothing.  "You're right, lad."

Frodo closes his eyes to hide his own tears.  Just because it something is right, doesn't make it easy.  His father will leave him forever, but he must go with his blessing.  Now it is time for the son to be strong, a last act of filial love and devotion.  "When will you leave?"

Sam's reply is vague but they both know it will be September 22.  Somehow, Frodo knows that when he awakens that morning, even though it will be far earlier than he is accustomed, it will be too late.  It is almost as if his father's leaving has already happened, is already a memory.  He knows that he will find a letter waiting for him atop of stack of papers in the study, a will naming him heir to Bag End and the bulk of the fortune another Frodo left behind years ago.  He knows that he will feel a need to quiet his churning thoughts with action and that his feet will take him to the neglected garden.  Under the care of another loving gardener it will bloom again, all the more beautiful for the haunting scent of loss amid the spicy sweet smell of Sam Gamgee's famous silver-white roses.