Chapter Eight: A Respite

I was not at all upset that we had to stay an extra day in Tom’s house. I wanted to stay forever if it could have protected us from the dangers outside. I actually checked outside the window for hoof-prints from the Black Riders I had heard in my dream, but there were none. Had it then just been a dream that they had been so near and I would have the courage to leave?

Fear did not prevent you or Merry or Pippin from accompanying me. I stand in humble awe at the strength of your love and loyalty. I wish I could show you the same. It is a thorn in my heart that I must leave you all. You three accompanied me into greatest darkness, especially you, my Sam, most beloved brother, but now I must follow my own way out. I must travel this bit without you, into the light where you already are, but by a different path.

What lies at the end of that path was first shown to me in a dream that second night at Tom’s house and I have walked toward it until I am weary and falling, but each time I have risen again, because you have been there to help me. It has been a very long Road and I wonder why it has led me all the places it has, but there is a reason for it, I’m sure. I continue to be driven on, away from everything bright and beautiful and safe, from the Shire, from Tom’s house, from Rivendell, from Lorien. I didn’t want to leave any of those places, but I did. I don’t want to leave you, but I will. There is another place for me and during this entire journey, I have thought of that dream I had, even though the Ring mocked it and told me it was nothing but a dream, a falsity, a place and peace I would never have. I despaired and believed its lies at times, but I have still held that dream against me, tattered and torn as it sometimes has become, both a torture and my only hope.

I wish I could be as strong as Tom so the Ring had no hold over me. I wish I could have just made it disappear as he did, instead of trudging across endless miles as it devoured me from the inside. I wish I could still believe in walking under the dark when it was fearless. It was and I was until I left the Shire and never returned. But Gandalf said Tom couldn’t be trusted with the Ring. It was me everyone trusted and hoped in. It was you, my Sam, I trusted and hoped in. They praise us both for achieving what even they believed to be virtually impossible to do, but they should be just praising you.

* * *

The weather was all bad the morning we woke up in Master Tom’s home and that was just as well. I could see how that gladdened your heart! And we had a day of tales, nothing finer to be had than that. It reminds me of some days in the Shire when the weather outside was only fit for growing flowers and we would curl up with Mr. Bilbo and listen to tale after tale and get lost in daydreams. Some of Master Tom’s stories I could have easily done without about how wicked the trees had become, I had lived enough of those already myself, but I did enjoy many of his others and I know you did too.

What a shock to us all when after all that talking and listening, we watched him put him on the Ring and he didn’t disappear, but it did as he tossed it into the air. How very much I wish it could have been the end of it right then! He had not spoken truer words when he said your hand was fairer without it. If he could have done away with it, then your hand wouldn’t be missing a finger and I wouldn’t be missing half of my heart. I know there’s no use in asking, but oh, dear, why couldn’t it have been that way?