Chapter Thirty-Eight: Guides

I know how much you detested being with Smeagol, but how else could we have gotten to the Fire? We were lost and needed a guide. We could not have made it on our own unless another way had been shown to us. I had wonder whether good or evil would and in the end, it was both that did. I wished, I still wish, I had been able to save Smeagol for we shared the same burden and I would have rejoiced to see him relieved of it as well as I. He was relieved I suppose in a way since he no longer continues in this life, but I do not know what his fate was anymore than I know what mine will be. He died happy, or so one would seem to think, but he did not wish to die then and I wish he hadn’t. I wished he could have been cured, the same I hope I have for myself and Bilbo for I cannot continue as he had too for so many, many years.

Too many nights, I have cowered in my bed, curled into the smallest ball possible, and in my head and on my lips are Smeagol’s words, "Don’t look at us! Go away! Go to sleep!" I used to dream as a child sometimes of monsters chasing me, looking at me, waiting in the dark just for the right moment to seize me. I cried out for my parents then, but I put my fist in my mouth now so I don’t cry out to you, though you still do come, answering the cry of my heart that I cannot still that you have always heard since I met you. I am so glad you don’t ask why it cried out, but just hold me and rock me, stroke my curls, wipe my tears, kiss my head and sing to me so softly. I couldn’t tell you why, that sometimes I still think that the Eye is watching me as Smeagol knew it was still watching him. I know it isn’t, but the effects of that violation remain. But you can push the monsters away just as I used to beg my parents to do so when I had had too many of Bilbo’s tales to close to bedtime. You have bigger monsters to push away, but still they flee before you. No orc voice mocks and threatens, no whisper of the Ring tempts, no scream of it demands. There is just your voice.

"He went away long ago," Smeagol said of himself. "They took his Precious and he’s lost now." Oh, my Sam, how many nights I have lain awake thinking the same thing! I am lost, not as long as he was, but I feel that same pain, that terrible knowledge that something has been burned away inside me and I stare only at an empty void when I, Frodo of the Shire, used to dwell. I hold onto you when you come to me at night, unbidden by voice, but begged for by my heart. I wish I could hold you forever for that is only place I feel safe anymore, the only place I feel even vaguely myself, but I know I cannot.

As much I wanted to guide Smeagol out from the darkness and failed, I still hold onto your hand, my brother, and your voice to guide me out of my darkness. I know now that soon I must go on alone to seek the light that is far ahead of me, but I will not let go of your heart anymore than I know you will not let go of mine. You will still be my guide and guard, though you will not be physically beside me. I will miss that sorely, more sometimes than I think I can bear, but I know you will remain with me in other important ways and one day I will, I hope, see your smile again and feel your arms around me.

* * *

I know we couldn’t have done it without that dratted Slinker and Stinker, but I still wish we could have. I couldn’t understand until I had held the Ring myself a bit how you could be so kind and gentle with him. But you could see people in ways I couldn’t all the time. We were lost and we had to get some guidance because just two hobbits in the wilderness weren’t help to anyone. You trusted in him, you hoped, you believed, not blindly but a lot more than I could. You let him go when I would have strangled him. You accepted his promise and he was true as much as he could be. You helped in that I know and I know I didn’t, but I couldn’t abide him the way you did. I was too frightened and worried. I know you were too, you who had so many worries already and that terrible thing pulling you this way and that, dragging you down. I had just a day of it and that was already too much. I don’t know how you did it for so long. But you did.