Chapter Twenty-One: In Elven Lands

I woke thinking at first it was only a terrible dream I was waking from, but it was no dream. The fight had been real and it goes on even now, ever on and on. Gandalf told me I had begun to fade, that I was on the threshold of the wraith-world when I was brought and for four nights, Elrond sought to save me. You and my cousins have many more memories of that time than I do, dearest Sam, and it is memories I am sorry that you have, all that worry that has not ceased even now for me. What did you hear as I talked in my sleep?

I wish I could be well and have you not any more cause to fret over me. But I fear the fading has not stopped, nor the night ended. It continues and the dawn seems far off. I can see it on the horizon, the merest twinkling and I know I will have to cross the Sea before I can see it fully. Oh, Sam, how can I do that, leave you and my other brothers behind, to go to a land I know not but have seen only in my dreams? But I must go for the dream here has become a nightmare that I long to escape. I will be safe there, with the Elves as we were safe in Rivendell where the darkness cannot touch me, or so I hope. And I will look ever for you for one day I will stand on those shores and see you coming toward me. How I long for that day even now!

It was a joy to see that you and Merry and Pippin and Strider had escaped the Riders as well. How you have ever stayed at my side, my dearest guardian, always taken care of me which so much love. It increases my shame that I must abandon you when you have never abandoned me.

It was wonderful to see Bilbo at last as well. But it showed me that the lust for the Ring had not left him, even after all those years and I have little hope to believe it will leave me any sooner. I grieve for all the damage it did to him. He is the only one I could possibly speak of it to, the only one who would understand, but I do not wish to worry him even more than I wish to worry you, so it will sit there restlessly inside of me, tormenting and gnawing and tearing as it has since it woke, until I can defeat it or it utterly defeats me. Gandalf said that he wished I had held out at Weathertop. So do I! How many times have I wished each time it tempted me that I hadn’t given in. But I did many times or wanted to.

He also said if I had become a wraith I would have been tormented by the dark lord, if a greater torment could be devised than to be robbed of the Ring and to see it on his hand. Now that I have lost it, I cannot think of a worse torment than that, to know it is gone forever and I will never look at it or hold it again. Sometimes I think that is even worse than knowing and seeing what would have happened if the Ring had returned to him. The whole world would have fallen to him and I would know that it was my fault, my weakness that had made it so. Seeing even you in torment I don’t think would be as bad as seeing him have my precious. And that feels with me with such shame and loathing, it is a wonder that I can even still live. You do not know what so consumes me, my dearest Sam, how I can barely even stand to have you look at me so lovingly when I know I am so foul and how also I cannot bear to have you not look at me. If only you knew, but you won’t. I won’t ever tell you.

* * *

What a wondrous place Rivendell was. I couldn’t enjoy it much until you woke, but I will always remember it as place of joy after grief, day after night, light after darkness. The first days and nights were terrible, but that faded under all the wonder to behold, the singing, the feasting, the peace, the shelter from the storm. It was there that the Ring was first placed on its chain around your neck, but the evil of it couldn’t touch you there. How I wish that could have remained so, that it wouldn’t have weighed you down so much, wouldn’t have bit into your skin and heart and burned it and caused it to bleed. How I wish we could have both borne it so the damage wouldn’t have been so bad to you and only you.

It was that wonderful to see you awake and happy after all the frightful worry we had over you! You were clearer and brighter than ever and I imagine where you are now that you are growing even more so and when I see you next you will be shining even more and I will see you happy again like you were in Rivendell, surrounded by your own kind almost. I wonder - is that why I love Elves so much, even before meeting them, because I met and loved you first?

Lord Elrond worked on you for days and nights that all seemed to run together and I know he will continue to look after you and so will the Lady and Mr. Gandalf and Mr. Bilbo, but how hard it is that I am not there. I held your hand all those nights we waited for you to wake, trying to warm it, but it was so cold. You talked a lot in your sleep and my heart ached for all the terrors that you had endured all alone, the barrow-wights and the Riders. I was right next to you some of that time and still you had to fight by yourself. I wish I could have protected you better from it all. All this time you have had to fight alone because you went to places that I could not and how I wish I could have followed and fought with you. I tried that hard to hold onto you, first along the Road into darkness and then out into the light, back to the Shire, but I don’t think you ever left the night. You were taken away from me bit by bit by that terrible Ring as we were all so afraid you would be before that splinter was found. All these many months, you have been standing right next to me, but so far away I have not been able to reach you. If I traveled again along the same Road, would I see you instead in all those places where you slowly bled away? You suffered so much, my dear, and should have been rewarded with peace and healing, not with more exile.

I begged to be able to wait on you at the feast to celebrate your victory at the Ford, but I was not allowed. I can’t now either. Rose knows some of the times that I have lain awake, wondering about you. She knows I can’t sleep until I go to your room and check on you like I used to do. I fear she thinks I’m cracked and maybe I am. My heart surely is. But still I go and I see you sleeping there, fragile and pale as moonlight, your features still strained, but so beautiful it can take my breath away. As much as I know you need your sleep, sometimes I wish you would wake and look at me and smile or if you aren’t up to that yet, just look and I could look and smile at you. I wish I could hear your voice and that I could tell you how much I love you and miss you. I want so much to go to you that it hurts, to kiss your brow as I did each night, but I don’t move. I don’t even cross the threshold of your room. I think if I got closer, it would ruin the strange and wonderful sight that I see each night I need to. If I tried to kiss you, I would reach nothing and that would be too much for me. It is enough, or almost, to see, even if you aren’t all right yet, that at least you are sleeping, that you are safe, that you are wrapped in love. I can still feel you in my heart, in all my pain and all of yours. There I can hold you still since I can’t hold you anymore in my arms and I weep for the beauty and grief of that.