Chapter Seven: Dreams

I had a dream about the Sea right before Merry woke me. I have often dreamed of it, though it is only now that I understand why, soon that I will actually see it with my waking eyes. It is a longing I have had much of my life, perhaps that half of me that is Brandybuck and always liked the water, even though it had taken my parents from me. Why do we sometimes like that which gave us the deepest hurts? For the same reason, why do I still long for the Ring? I can’t explain it to myself and those wiser than I, I dare not ask and expose my shame to them.

When we entered the Old Forest and were guided along by the ill will of the trees toward the Withywindle and to Old Man Willow, I wonder if the Ring was at work there also, drawing evil to itself as it had the entire journey. Merry and Pippin could have been killed and it would have been my fault. They were in danger because I was with them and I have grieved that it was not the first time or the last time. How I wished then and wish now that none of this had ever happened, but I try to encourage myself with Gandalf’s and Arwen’s words that it was all meant to happen as it happened and there is going to be relief for me where I am going.

But my fears followed me into my dreams into even such a merry place at Tom Bomdadil’s. I heard Black Riders and just about convinced myself that I, we had been found. Then I fell back asleep, still safe and wondering how I would ever find the courage to leave, to take the next steps that I knew I had to. I did not choose this Road, but it seemed to have chosen me and so I have had to place my feet upon it and follow wherever it led. And almost always you were there with me, my most dear guardian. It is only when you weren’t that I lost my way and that is no fault of yours.

* * *

I was that glad to get out of the Old Forest. To think you could have drowned in your sleep or that Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin could have eaten by Old Man Willow! I still shiver and that was not by far the worst of the dangers we got into. Many more terrible things happened, mostly directly to you, but you just kept going. Nothing stopped you. I can only stand in awe at your endurance and courage and love that it took to complete the task you took upon yourself, to wear that terrible thing around your neck all those months, to accept that to do so would bring you into great danger, to fight against all it was trying to do to you, inside and out. I only held it that short time, but even then, I could feel how horrible it was. And you strove against it much longer than I did.

It was good you had times to rest, like when we were rescued by Master Tom. A more peculiar man, if man he was, I never met, but he and his house and his fair Goldberry were full of cheer and that we needed for our journey, almost as much as we needed food and water, and that he had plenty of too! It was good to see you happy then.

I hold onto every memory of you, the ones that make my heart break even more, the ones that I know will make it sing when it is again strong enough to do so. I see you the tears in your eyes that you desperately wanted to shed but were afraid to show me. I also see you smiling at me with all your love in your eyes, shining with that the Elf-light that Goldberry saw. I see that smile in my dreams and one day, my dearest of dears, I will see it again with my waking eyes.