Chapter Fifty-Five: The Wheel of Fire

You tried so hard to keep me alive, my Sam, but I was being reduced to nothing but the fire within. Your light and the fire inside me burned equally bright, one healing and life-giving, one tormenting and life-taking. Every memory of home, of any living thing was being stripped from me. No sign of sun or moon or stars. All I could see was what the Enemy had made of the land, what I was being made into inside - a cauldron, a barren landscape. There was nothing left in my mind but a giant wheel of fire and I was laid upon it, unable to move as it burned away everything left of me. I was torn apart by the Enemy’s hunger and my own. You gave me nothing but unceasing love, my Sam, though more and more I had less and less to give you. When out of that boundless love, you offered to carry the Ring once more, I grew wroth and nearly attacked you as I nearly had in the Tower. Isn’t it terrible that terrible lust that assails me still would give me the strength that was so steadily dwindling when nothing else could? I said I would go mad if you tried to take it from me. You did not try, but I know I am mad all the same for what else could account for such despicable behavior?

I was doomed to go to the Fire and you were doomed to walk beside me to the end because you refused to part with me. I have done nothing to thank you for your devotion. You remained ever at my side as my entire will was condensed more and more to merely putting one foot in front of the other, getting to the Fire outside me before the Fire inside consumed me utterly. He sought ever greater purchase in me and bit by bit I faded away even as the fight inside me waxed and waned with my remaining, dwindling strength. Ever he sought for me, to gaze into my eyes and I shielded myself as best as I could from that terrible power but I knew it was only a matter of a little time before I was consumed utterly. Already I felt laid bare to his Eye, even more than I had felt in the Marshes.

Sometimes still I feel it bent toward me. It is yours that I see in the daylight, pouring love and light into me, but it is his that I see at night, just as powerfully and just as real or so it seems. Where can I hide that he will not find me? I cower in my own bed just as I did on the way to the Mountain and I feel no safety within familiar, beloved walls. Only your arms offer any shelter but I cannot remain there forever, much as I long to do so. I must leave them at some time and it is then that he finds me.

Still you continue to fight him for me as you did every moment of our journey. Did you know you fought a foe far greater than you that you could not possibly defeat? It did not matter to you and in the end he was bested in the encounter as was a spider much larger than yourself. And though it may seem, my Sam, in the coming months and years, that you have lost and he has won, I will not let him have the final victory. That will be yours, dearest heart. That is the only way I can think to thank you for all you have done for me. I felt all the love you wrapped me in as much as you put your cloak around me when I gave away all else and dared in my despair to be taken. I am clothed in your love and Merry’s and Pippin’s and Bilbo’s, Aragorn’s and Gandalf’s. I am dressed finer than any king.

* * *

My Gaffer always said there was no point in wishing, only doing, but there were times, especially toward the end, that I felt all I had were wishes. I wished I could have fed you more and given you more water than just enough to barely wet your cracked lips and parched throat and most of that dirty water that it was a wonder we didn’t sicken from it. You didn’t even have enough strength to hold the skin to your lips or maybe it was because you trusted me and not yourself. I wished I could have helped you more, instead of just offering a steadying hand on your arm when you slipped. I wish I could have stopped your shivering that you suffer from even now. I wish I could have let you rest more because I knew it was your exhaustion and the dizziness that came upon us both from the lack of water, that was causing those falls, nicking your hands and knees and feet until you were bleeding. You barely had the strength to raise your hands to your face and lick the blood there, ignoring all the filth caked on you, so desperate you were for any moisture.

There were other things I wished for too. I wished I had a salve for the burns around your neck that are so inflamed and weeping, and for the other cuts that you have taken, especially where the orcs had whipped you and your poor feet.. I knew how painful that chain must have been cutting into your skin like that, but you did not utter a complaint. You hardy spoke at all the closer we got to the Fire. You had to focus all your waning strength just keeping one foot in front of the other. I wished for a balm for your cracked, bleeding lips that you licked with your swollen tongue for what little moisture was there.

How you kept going under all the terrible weight and thirst and hunger and what that despicable thing was doing to you inside, I don’t know. But you did. I watched how you fought it off, shielding yourself from something I couldn’t see but you could. I watched as your hand crept toward the Ring, then you held it back. I was right beside you but you were somewhere else and all the battles I would have fought for you, you had to fight alone. I listened long into each night how labored your breathing got, how desperately your body needed so much more than I could give it, but as much as it wrenched my heart to hear such ragged breaths, I was glad because it meant you were still alive, still with me.

I held your hand each night and I felt your hand weakly curl around mine when you had enough strength to do that. Other times, it lay limply in mine. I hated to sleep because I feared you would stop breathing and I wouldn’t even know it. But still I had to sleep sometimes when I could no longer keep my lids propped a moment longer and some nights I could not bear to wake you because you got so little sleep as it was already. It was then while you lay shivering in the Elven cloak that I took you into my arms so if you did pass in the night, at least I would have been holding you. Each night I kissed your head, wished you a soft good-night and told you that I loved you and I was proud of you and you would sleepily murmur the same, then lay your head against my heart with a sigh. I said a quick prayer to the Lady to keep us safe when I could no longer guard you. I felt peace come to me then and I knew we would safe. Even when I realized, as you had tried to gently convince me of long before, that the Fire would be the end of us both, I still had peace and hope.

I love you, my dearest dear. I love you. I love you. I love you. When will I be able to tell you that again? I didn’t say it anywhere as many times as I ought. I thought I would have all my life to tell you, greet you each morning as I drew the curtains back and kiss you goodnight each night. Until I can do that again, until I can do more than just spell the words out, smeared at times with tears, I step out each night and speak my love to the wind and the stars. Can you hear me calling to you? Can you feel the kisses I send out upon the air?