Chapter Forty-Six: The Morgul Vale

What a terrible place was Minas Morgul and how drawn to it I was, like a moth to a flame. And like one I would have been consumed had you not drawn me away. Always, my dearest guardian, you have pulled me back to what little light remains to me, but the darkness I felt then was total. I thought I had gone blind. When that passed, I felt the call of the Ring. I had no wish to answer it, but still it beat upon me and tried to master my will. I could only watch in horror as my hand moved toward it. I had some small strength left to fight it when my hand clasped the Lady’s phial instead of it. I could not challenge of the Morgul-king that rose up before us. I knew I had not the strength. Not then as yet. But still the thought remains to shame me that one day I thought I would. Now he and his master are gone, but the Ring still has a hold on me. It has not finished feeding on me or I on it. I have laid upon the wheel of fire and I am still being consumed. Despair sought to consume me as the army of the undead king marched by and I thought I was too late to accomplish my task and even if I did, there would be no one who would know of it. Then that terrible weakness passed, though the despair did not, it plagues me even now, but I knew I still had to try and it mattered not if no one knew of it.

But the one thing that doesn’t haunt me of all that does from that place, is even there, my Sam, you had cheer to ease my heart. That I try to remember when the darkness presses close enough to suffocate me and I do not yet hear your soft padding in the hall that I listen for, half-dreading that I have once more woken you out of sound sleep and from Rose’s arms, half-dreading that you will not wake and relieve my agony. You always come, always ready to brush back my curls and hold me and just love me until the darkness recedes once more. But until you come, I repeat to myself all you said about being in tales and that are only worthwhile reading and remembering if there are trials in them that must be surmounted. I remember that you made me laugh, calling me the most famousest of hobbits. Ah, my own, I think that title belongs to you or to Merry and Pippin, not to me. I failed in what I wished to do. All along I knew I would. I wished to get to the Fire, but I knew I would not be able to surrender the Ring to the flames. And I could not surrender myself to them either. Another had to die in my place to accomplish the Quest. Perhaps that was his part to play in the tale, but would he have had to if I hadn’t failed? I am burdened still so heavily. The Ring is gone but it is my heart that is bowed under its weight now and not my head. I was weary then, we both were after climbing so high and far, but I am wearier now. Rest awaits, just as you hoped it would, but it does not await here. My journey is not yet over. Your arms that held me then in that terrible valley and have held me so many times since cannot hold me where I must go. I must climb still some more, out of the darkness in which I yet dwell. There were many days we thought we would never see the dawn. You have, my dearest brother and my weary heart rejoices, but I still await it. The Road goes ever on and we must follow, pursuing it with weary or eager feet, even as it forks and we take different paths. I cannot see far upon it, it is still wrapped in shadows, but there is faint light ahead as though coming through thick leaves. I hope one day as our paths wind around they may meet and merge once more and I will be there to meet you and take your hand and we will walk together again where there is no shadow.

* * *

There was something in that terrible tower that drew you and it was that hard to pull you away. I think sometimes I never did. The pain I saw in your eyes pierced my heart. If I wasn’t seeing the Fire, I saw that dead land and I don’t know what was worse. I still loved you no matter what, my dear, naught would ever change that, but it was, like you said, there was a wheel of Fire, and you lay upon it and it burned you away. You fought it and kept enough of yourself from it claiming everything, but there was so little left of you, I wonder if that little was left, not by you, by the Enemy to torment you, to have you realize what he could do. Oh, I can’t believe I just wrote it, let alone thought it, but I have. I’m glad you won’t ever see it and I’ll never tell you. It won’t be true anymore anyway, even if it may have been before, though there weren’t be nothing I’d be more happy to be wrong about, thinking I may have seen it.

But then when the pain gets to be the worse and I am missing you the most, I remember also that you laughed in that vale. Not just a small laugh neither, but heartily twice. I bet no such sound had ever been heard there and no one or nothing welcomed it more than I did. It drives away my tears every time, that and hearing Elanor’s laughter and our Frodo’s and Rosie’s smile. And each time I go to your room and see you sleeping happy. I remember how you slept peacefully in my arms then and many times since and how you smiled at me when I woke you.  I look forward to the day you will again. I love you, my Frodo.