Chapter Fifty-Six: One Step More

It was struggle just to get moving, to take one step then another, one breath and another. The ash and fumes burned my throat and the Ring was like a chain of fire around my neck. If I took shallow breaths not too quickly, I could manage a little better, though my lungs burned all the same and if my will was overcome and I gulped in deep breaths, I was reduced to a wretched, curled heap on the ground, coughing, hacking and wheezing, trying to get my breath back from the fit that seized my lungs when I tried to breathe deeper. You were instantly kneeling at my side, rubbing my back, soothing me until the fit passed. I could hear you say something, but I couldn’t understand over his voice. But even hearing your voice was such a comfort. Oh, my poor, dear Sam. It was such a blessing to have you beside me, though I felt for you it was more of a curse, doomed to walk with someone already doomed, but you would not part from me.

Sometimes I was so weakened by the coughing that I could do nothing but lay in your arms. What a solace that was! My throat was almost too parched to form words, but none would have been adequate anyway to express what your devotion meant to me and still means to me. After only a short while though, with your help, I struggled up again. I looked once more to the Mountain. Our doom lay there but the saving of Middle-earth. A stray breeze blew past our cheeks at rare times, rustling our curls and we were strengthened by that gift, a moment of hope instead of the despair that was more and more my companion as dogged as you were, dark as you were light.

I had long forgotten what it felt like to take a clean breath or to walk with grass underfoot instead of that shifting dirt and over rocks sharp enough to cut. How much blood did we both leave back there? You were always there to help me up when I would slip or fall. The little water we had left was almost gone even with your careful rationing. You had to hold up my waterskin up to my mouth because I could hardly even hold my head up anymore with the weight of the Ring pulling me down and the exhaustion that was crushing me almost as much. I was glad you did because if I had had the skin in my own hands, I would have sucked it to the last drop long ago to try to cool the cauldron that burned inside me and I would have died, free of my burden, but dooming you and all of Middle-earth because I had been too mad with thirst to do anything else. When we could still eat, you would push a small bit of lembas bread between my cracked, barely parted lips and then raise my water bottle to my parched mouth, enough to wet my tongue and get the bread down and then a little more out of compassion and pity.

I already knew I was going to die, but I fought to hold that off until we got to the Fire. I had to bear the screams of my mind and body for light, food, water and rest, for release from the agony of his violation of me. All I had left of myself inside was those screams and uncontrollable sobbing. Sometimes those tears made their way out no matter how much I tried to keep them in.When the water ran out and we were too parched to eat what little food was left, you held me as I cried and carefully gathered my tears and fed them back to me, turning that expression of torment into a gift to moisten my lips. You gave me your own as well. Oh, my Sam, what you wouldn’t do for me!

You have no idea how much strength that gave me, my best beloved, enough to go on, to endure for another day, to say no once more to the taunts and empty promises that burrowed into my heart and soul, day and night, unceasingly. I listened more and more to his voice as he took everything else away from me, but he couldn’t take you, my rock, my guardian, my light, my heart. Oh, how he tried though, how very hard he tried. And now he has finally succeeded or I have let him succeed. You stay with me even now, after all I’ve done, but I must reward that steadfast devotion with desertion.

You held me at night, trying to give me rest, but the Ring did not let me sleep easily. Later you would wake me with gentle words and caresses. I looked up at you with only half-open eyes and wearily stared in wonder at the smile I saw there. What reward could I give you for all the love and devotion that I saw then and still see every moment streaming from your beautiful eyes? None at all. I tried to cry but no sound, not even the merest whimper came out. I had not enough moisture or strength left. Your devotion was going to cost you your life. You leaned down and kissed my head. What did you see in my eyes I wonder? What do you see now, but nothing more than the same when it should be long over but it isn’t? Nothing to make you smile, but smile you did and smile you do and I shall always treasure that among all the many other things I hold dear and tight against me.

* * *

This wasn’t the way we always imagined our grand adventures to be in our blissful ignorance of what lay outside the Shire. I was always content to let you be the hero in those tales we made up of our own and I your faithful guard. There were many times you tried to get me to be the hero, but I was happy just to be with you and have you lead. You were the hero in this one, too, dearest dear, so much more than you ever were. Filthy, stinking and so exhausted you could barely move, let alone think, you still went on. I saw such pain in your eyes from your horrible weariness and what that terrible thing was doing to you. You could not hide it. You looked at me at times, in fear and horror for what was happening inside you, wordlessly begging me to stop it, but I couldn’t and that tore my heart to pieces. But then you would draw it back some and there would return the naked will and determination simply to endure and get where we were going. There was nothing of the cheer that used to light your eyes, but still at night, I would see your light and it would comfort me and leave me in wonder at how beautiful you still were.

It was such a struggle just to breathe and a worse one to watch you stumble along, choking on the same fumes, and not just drag you away from it all to some place clean. But there was no place clean for leagues upon leagues. We had to go on, deeper into darkness instead of the light that we both yearned for and the sooner we got there, the sooner we’d be done and I could take you home where it was clean and bright and there would be all the food and drink we could want and the Sun and the Moon and grass and gardens and all else living. How terrible it was to walk through this dead, blighted land. I hated to think of what it was doing to you just being here, you who always loved such bright, living things. But there would be end to it. You were determined about that and I was just as determined to get you home. I would see you smile again and the light return to your eyes and the cheer and I would be able to laugh again because you would be able to.

You waved at things in the air that I could not see, but you could and I wondered what further torment I was unable to protect you from. I wished I could go there with you, wherever you were, lost in some waking nightmare that I was afraid to guess at, but more than anything, wanted to be there with you, to draw you away from it. Your dreams got worse, the closer we got to the Fire. You whimpered or cried out in your sleep and all I could do was hold you tighter and murmur comforts because I did not know where you were or how to find you. I hated seeing that terrible thing laying across your heart. I wish I could have held my hand between the two and protected more than your body. I feared you felt utterly alone, with only it for company the closer we came. But you responded each time, you calmed a bit and held me a little tighter, buried your head a little deeper into my chest. You were still aware I was with you. I promised you each night that I would never leave you, that I would always be with you. You murmured soft thanks. You didn’t respond when I told you I would get you home too. You didn’t believe that was possible anymore, but I couldn’t not believe it. It was what kept me going, kept me alive.

That terrible voice tried to trick me into laying down to die with you and if that was to come, that was to come, but I wouldn’t do it because it told me to. Did you hear the same voice I wonder, trying to get you to give up? Was it that that took your hope away? I hated to think of what it was doing to you inside, what lies it was trying to get you to believe, what promises it was making that were entirely false. Even if it was the same voice, it didn’t work. It took your hope but not your will and determination. I will never forgot one moment of our journey because though there was much darkness, there was also light, light you gave to me, from your love and your courage and your endurance.

I did get you home or at least partway. I don’t quite know how to explain that to myself, but I think you are even more on the way than you were before. It’s true what Mr. Bilbo said about the Road going on and on. And I will still follow where ever it leads because I know at the end of it, I will find you, my love, I will find you. Sometimes I think I see you even now, standing there, all aglow like I’m looking right into the sun but it’s you. It’s you. I think you know somehow or somebody does, that I need to see you and that way and when the pain flares up even now in my heart that is already so full of your gifts, I get another one, usually on your birthday, when the longing is the keenest. Rose says sometimes I talk to you in my sleep and hold my arms out and close them around seemingly nothing, but she knows I am holding you. Every other night I fall asleep listening to her heart, but on that Halimath day, it is in your arms that I sleep. I do not look forward to what will bring me to you - my Rose’s death - but I do look forward to the peace your face, your smile, your love and your arms will bring me. Always when my heart was hurt worst, from my mum’s death to the one that will send me once more into your arms, you have always given me shelter in your heart. I felt you even that night that my Gaffer died. It was not such more words I heard with my ears, but deep inside, you spoke to me of your love and your sorrow. I remember how the wind came and dried my tears and I knew it was you wiping them away. You held me tight then and at the grave, but then let me go to Rose for I needed her too. Thank you, my dear. Or hantanyel, I suppose I should say. I found one of your old Elvish grammar books that Mr. Bilbo had given you. I would have thought you would have taken it with you, but maybe you left for me to find because one day I will need it myself.