Chapter 11 – Dark Dreams and Dead Ends

“Mama?”  

Frodo crept down the hall to his parents’ room. He wasn’t sure what had awoken him, but he was drawn inexplicably to their room. Soon, he could hear his father running around in a panic and could see the candlelight under the door flickering frantically. Frodo stopped in front of the closed door. He could hear his father speaking but could not understand the words. He could hear his mother not at all; she was absolutely silent and this struck Frodo as odd that only one of his parents was in a fit. He turned the doorknob, pushed the door open. The smell of blood hit him before he saw it. Liquid red stained the sheets and ran onto the floor. The healer – where had she come from? – was struggling to keep his mother from bleeding too much, to stop the hemorrhage before the damage became irreversible. His mother was staring up at the ceiling, her eyes blank and clouded, and her breath was coming shallow and short. No one noticed as he entered the doorway of the room to look upon the scene in confusion and fear. What was happening? His eyes were fixed on his mother, so pale and luminescent, he was drawn to her, unaware now of anything else but his mother’s stone-like features. He took another step forward, felt something sticky and moist under his foot, looked down. Blood everywhere, covering his feet, crawling up his legs to soak his nightgown, blood over the healer’s arms and clothes, over his mother, the sheets, his father, everything red, everywhere he looked flooded with the sticky hot and acrid fluid. His keening alerted them to his presence even before he realized he was making a sound. Drogo ran forward and scooped him up but Primula made no move. “Get him out of here!” the healer called over her shoulder.  

Get him out of here!  

Drogo put Frodo down in the parlor and in the next instant, Frodo was running through the tunnels of Brandy Hall, panic in his throat. He was running down the tunnels and pathways, past servants he couldn’t name and cousins he barely knew and who knows who else. He was running out the door and down the lane, blindly headed for the river, for the boat. He must find the boat, must find his parents. Must make sure they were all right. He reached the river and knew not which way to go, but remembering that his parents would have launched at the Ferry, he turned south and went that way, past the Ferry where no one stood, past the wading pools where no children played, past fisherhobbits who were not fishing. He ran, until he found the boat, rolled onto its side half submerged in the water, its hull filled with the clear liquid, too much water, too much water. His parents were not there, so he continued on, running still though his lungs burned and his legs begged for rest. He ran until he found them, several fellows, some his uncles and older cousins, some he didn’t know, standing around in an uneven circle, shivering and whispering and dripping with water, soaked clear through their clothes to their wrinkled fingers and toes. The sand around them was also drenched in water, the transparent liquid having dripped off the fellows as they stood in silent horror over their discoveries, just recently pulled from the River. Frodo found a break in the circle, and finally he stopped running, stopped breathing, stopped knowing anything but what he saw there on the sandy banks of the Brandywine. Both his parents, dressed in their finest as they had been the previous night, now water logged and blue, glassy eyes looking up into the sky, seeing nothing, their bodies no longer shivering from the cold. No longer doing anything. No! Mama! Papa! Nonononono! Rorimac looked up and saw him there, pushed one of his brothers into action. “Get him out of here!”  

Get him out of here!  

Frodo left on his own, turned around, ran away before restricting hands could bind him.  

Those were not his parents. They couldn’t be. He refused to believe it and ran to their house, searched every room. He ran to their new smial but could not find it, then ran to Crafter’s Field, where his father would work some mornings, and found it empty and abandoned, then up to the hill overlooking the field, where he and his mother always went to be alone, but she was not there either. He sat against a tree, thin trunk and bedraggled branches, hugged his knees to himself, and let the tears roll down his face as he sobbed without end. Hhe refused to leave that place, stayed there, just in case, for three days and three nights, hiding from the searchers who scanned the fields below but did not come up the hill. He hid, waiting for his mother who did not come, waiting for his father who did not appear. Why had he ever left that place? He should have stayed and waited for whatever may have come. Surely, if he had sat still long enough, they would have come look for him, would have found him.  

He should have stayed, then the dreams would not have come to haunt him ceaselessly, the dreams of the River, silent, cold and black, moving and lapping against the boat, moving with some mysterious force that rose up out of the depths to tip the boat and drag his parents under, taking them away from him, dragging them out to Sea. The dreams of the Sea were worse yet. He could hear them there, struggling still for release from their captor, struggling to return to him, asking him to come to them when they could struggle no longer, asking him to help them. He had tried to go once and he had failed; he’d not had the courage to attempt it again. Milo’s arms lifting him out of the tub, panicked and calling for help. “I need to get him out of here!”  

How does one go on, when all they loved and cared for was gone? How does one continue to live in a world gone cold and silvery-black? When everywhere one looked, there was only despair and danger and fear, uncertainty and hopelessness? What’s the point, the purpose? Is there one?  

“That’s what the story’s about, same as all the others,” Drogo explained patiently as he tucked Frodo into bed.  

“I don’t understand,” Frodo said, stifling a yawn.  

“It’s about all those things, uncertainty and danger at every turn, never knowing when you might meet your end, but continuing on anyway.”  

“But why?”  

“Well, because, if you don’t go on, you’ll never know if that next turn was your end, or your beginning, but they’re the same thing really.”  

“How can it be a beginning if it’s an end?”  

“Because the beginning is always the end of something else. That’s just how it works. A new day can’t begin unless the old one ends. The rain can’t begin unless the sunshine ends. You see?”  

“But why do things have to end at all?”  

“Why, don’t you want the sun to shine and the plants to get their watering? Nothing would grow without such things and we’d have nothing.”  

“I do have nothing already.”  

Asphodel’s arms encircling him, she turned to press a kiss into his curls. “There, there. It seems that way now, but it won’t always be so sad.”  

“I should have gone with them.”  

“Don’t say such things!”  

Get him out of here!  

“Frodo! Breathe, lad! FRODO!”  

He picked up the twig and placed it before the spider, tempting it to crawl up the stem. The spider moved aside, walking past, wanting to go on its way. He placed the twig before it again, only to be shunned once more. Over and over again he did this, until the spider was backed into a corner and finally reared up in defense.  

Get him out of here!  

The blood dripped down the sheets, mixing with the water on the sand, the water covered his ears, his eyes, his nose, the pounding on the bathing room door muffled and distant, so distant now, as distant as the dreams when he drinks the healer’s powerful teas, on the other side of existence, where all is numb and cold and nothing matters.  

Get him out of here!  

The spider reared, grew to monstrous size, towered over him, dripping blood and venom and bile. It shrieked with unearthly tones, its cries piercing the blackened sky, deafening him, and he raised his hands to his ears as the beast loomed down and struck, sending a jolt of searing hot venom through him, snapping him like the very twig he had teased it with. He slipped into the water and swallowed. He could not breathe. Milo, pounding on the door. FRODO!

Frodo opened his eyes with a start and sat up, checking himself for blood and bites, finding only his bruised and weary body. He sank back down to the ground in relief and peered up at the blackened sky overhead, his mind blank of any further thought. He sighed and closed his eyes, waiting for sleep to come again.  

They had run into each other quite without meaning to.

Both teams had followed their trails as swiftly as they could, Dodi’s having the more difficult time. The trail they were on had split two more times, but they could not risk going through the forest one by one. They decided to follow one trail at a time as far as it would take them, then backtrack to the next. They stood to lose a great deal of time, but they had no other choice.

As it turned out, the trails ran about in circles and each came to the same point, a minute glade that looked to have been recently occupied by someone. Dodi and Rufus scanned the forest floor with sharp eyes.

“It looks like he laid here for a time,” Dodi said, indicating what appeared to be a regular patch of dirt to the others. “This is probably where he slept.”

“Perhaps he is still somewhere close by,” Milo said. “Should we risk calling for him?”

“I don’t see how it would harm anything. The trees already know we’re here. Look for trails as you go,” Rory said.

So they raised their voices and spread out a bit, keeping within eyesight of each other and calling to Frodo. Several minutes passed before they were too far separated from each other and had to return to the glade. Nothing stirred within the forest and they could only assume that Frodo was too far away to hear them.

They rested then, to eat and think of their next step, which was clearly to find the others and rejoin them to make camp. The sun was already sinking below the horizon and they were far past their appointed time of regrouping. No sooner had they seated themselves upon the forest floor than they heard a rustling on the trail behind them. They looked up, hope in their throats, and from the foliage emerged Dino and his team. The two teams blinked at each other.

“What are you doing here?” Rory asked.

“Our trail went cold so we backtracked to yours, only yours split too, so we picked one trail and hoped for the best,” Marmadas said.

“Wouldn’t have mattered much which one you picked,” Rufus put in now. “All the trails lead to here.”

“Why here?” Gil asked, looking around. There was a cold, ruthless feeling about this small glade that he didn’t much care for. “Is there something special about this place?”

“Most likely he just found himself going around in circles as he tried to find a way out of here,” Saradoc assessed, putting down his pack to join the others.

“Did you hear our voices calling for Frodo then?” Rufus asked.

They shook their heads. “We heard no such thing,” Dino said. “The forest must have smothered your calls to prevent them from carrying too far.”

“But why would he be going in circles if he was trying different ways out?” Gil asked, a shiver going through him at the thought of the forest coming alive and smothering them next.

“That’s the nature of the forest,” was all Dino gave for an answer.

“Come on,” Edic said to the younger lad and they both followed Sara to sit with the other searchers. “I suppose we’ll be making camp here tonight.”

“This is just as good a place as any,” Dodi said, looking around. “At least we seem to be going in the right direction, and we can always hope that if Frodo slept here before, he might return tonight.”

Soon, everyone was sitting in a large circle, eating in quiet contemplation of the situation. The sky above was deep purple fading to midnight black and the forest around them was as dark as they have ever seen. They lit no fires and ate the travel cakes that the cooks had quickly made for them. They were fortunate in the warm weather, for they did not have to bother with pitching a tent and other than the light it would give, they did not miss a fire. Yet the heat was a curse for them as well. Each hour in the heat was an hour lost for Frodo, and in the back of their minds, they all knew it.

They spread out their sleeping rolls wherever they could find comfortable ground and lay upon them. Though the camp was full of soft whispers at first, the toil of the day’s search had them all exhausted and soon everyone was drifting off to sleep, some snoring softly, Dodi snoring to bring the forest down.  

Gil woke to the sound of urgent whispers. He opened his eyes enough to see that it was still night and everyone else was still asleep. Everyone, that is, but Saradoc and the Master. Gil closed his eyes again and tried to drift back to oblivion, but in the absolute silence of the Forest, the whispers of the two older hobbits carried like shouts into his ears.

“-running out of time,” Saradoc was saying.

“I know, son,” Rory replied. “We’re going as fast as we can. Hopefully, he’ll stop walking as he becomes more lethargic, and so long as the trail doesn’t divide again, we should have no more delays.”

“And if we still don’t find him in time or the forest decides to become difficult, how am I supposed to go home and tell Esme we’ve lost him?” Sara asked. “It would be like losing one of our own.”

“We’ll find him, Sara,” Rory said, an empty promise and they both knew it.

“This is my fault,” Sara said. “I shouldn’t have let Frodo go to the field by himself. I should have insisted he wait.”

“And those lads shouldn’t have taken him to the Opening and that Gil there should have kept his mouth shut and that bounder should have stayed by the Gate,” Rory said. “And, most importantly, Frodo should have stayed out of here. You could blame everyone in Buckland if you want to, son, that’s not going to get things done.”

“I know.” A resigned sigh. “I’m trying, Father, I am. We both are, Esme and me. We try to understand him, try to remember how much more difficult this is for him than it is for us. We constantly tell him that we’re there to speak with him whenever he wants, and still he shuts himself away from us.” Sara rolled slightly on his side and settled into a more comfortable position. “Is it that he doesn’t believe us? Or he doesn’t trust us? What are we doing wrong?”

“Every child is different,” Rory said. “Look at me and all my brothers and sisters. We were all different and if our parents had tried to raise us all the same, it would have been disastrous. They had to learn each time one of us was born how to raise us; they never did figure it out with Saradas either. Why do you think he’s such a stick in the mud?” Sara laughed faintly. “You just need to learn how to handle Frodo, and you will, but you’re coming into it halfway through and not in the best of circumstances. You just need to give yourself time.”

“Will we even have that time now?” Sara mused. His father gave no answer though it pained him to not be able to reassure his son.

There was a moment’s pause as each hobbit considered the situation, and Gil nearly drifted off. Then Saradoc spoke again, wistful and forlorn. “Have you ever heard Frodo sing to Merry? He’ll bundle Merry up and climb onto the rocking chair, scooting all the way back so he can hold Merry more securely. Then he’ll start humming and eventually sing, one of those lullabies that Prima used to sing to him. He has such a sweet voice, just like his mother, and Merry will stop fussing immediately and simply stare at him until he falls asleep. Then Frodo will just hold him, humming still and smiling with such love, and in those moments he’s just like he was before Primula and Drogo drowned. Frodo may not be our son, but he’s as much a brother to Merry as he can be. If anything were to happen to him, Merry won’t even remember him.”

Rory reached out and clasped his son on the shoulder. “We’ll find him,” he said again. “We’ll leave before first light and we won’t stop until we find him. We have water for him and food, and Dodi saw to bringing any medications we might need. There’s no point lingering on what ifs.”

They grew silent again. How long into the night they sat in worried silence, Gil did not know, for despite the sudden dread grown cold in the pit of his stomach, he drifted off to sleep soon after. When next he woke, it was still dark but several voices surrounded him and someone was shaking his shoulder.

“Time to wake up, Gil,” Milo said. “We’re eating on our feet.”

Milo helped the tween up and back into his pack. Gil swayed slightly under the weight and his tiredness. Milo kept a hold of the lad until Gil was steady and awake enough to manage on his own, then he went to retrieve breakfast.

Soon enough, everyone was awake, yawning and blurry-eyed, but ready to continue the march. They took care of personal business as quickly as they could and rejoined the line. When everyone was accounted for, they pushed off, with Saradoc now at the lead with Dodinas, and Dinodas at the rear with Rorimac.

They marched through the predawn darkness in silence, munching on their travel cakes and taking small sips of water from the skins. The water was already a third gone and Dodi warned them to be more conservative if it were to last them another day or two. Only one skin remained untouched and that was reserved for Frodo.

With their supplies dwindling, the hobbits instinctively began to look for other sources of water, finding none. Now Gil understood Saradoc’s concern. Frodo has been in the forest for three days now, and in stifling heat besides. The lad’s time was running short and he would have no chance of survival if he were not found soon. Unless he had found his way to the Withywindle. The direction of the lad’s tracks did not suggest that however. Frodo was going deeper into the heart of the forest with every step, where not even light could be seen anymore, if Gil could judge from the whispered conversations around him.

They finished nibbling on their cakes at about the same time, and Seredic turned to Gil. “So, why did you come?” he asked.

“Because I feel responsible for what happened,” Gil said.

“Because you taunted him,” Milo stated. He had not warmed up to Gil much over the past day but at least he had stopped scowling at the lad. Now he sighed regrettably. “You’re not the first to tease him though, so why would it prompt him to do something so drastic as this?”

“I was telling a ‘My Friend Tim’ story and he overheard me. I suppose he took me seriously and said I was lying, so I said he would never have the courage to come into the Forest himself. I regretted it immediately, but I failed to apologize.”

“So you’re here to redeem yourself?” Edic asked.

“I’m here to help,” Gil said.

The older lads accepted this and seemed content to leave it at that. They walked for several more moments in silence, keeping their eyes trained on their surroundings for any signs or clues of Frodo’s whereabouts. Then suddenly, in front of them, the line stopped and a commotion could be heard.

“We found him?” Milo said hopefully, but it quickly became apparent that no such wonderful thing had happened. The commotion was not a happy one and soon everyone was gathered tight to discover what the problem was.

Rory made his way to the front of the group to speak with his brother. “What happened? Why have we stopped?”

Dodinas scowled down at the ground and then up at the trees, silent sentinels forming an impenetrable wall before them. “I knew the trees were being far too silent last night, and now we know why: the trail is blocked.”
 
 
 

To be continued…