Chapter 4: Shells, Sand and Stars

From that day on, Frodo often went into the Sea. The menacing boom and thunder of the neverending waves still held a feeling of mystery and unfathomable power, yet Frodo now knew that he could seek it out and become a part of it when he desired to.

All attempts at building a home had ceased. Frodo remembered Celebrían's advice and no longer felt hurry or guilt. He did move into the hobbit hole with Bilbo, but everyone understood that it was not Frodo's final home. Each day he spent much time alone in the waves or walking the strand, marvelling at the small, delicate shells that lay scattered about.

It was on one such day, in the late afternoon, when Gandalf found Frodo lost in thought and gazing at a translucent shell that lay open like two wings upon his fingertip.

When Gandalf sat down on the sand and watched him, Frodo stirred.

"I have seen many of these," Frodo murmured. He did not look away from his hand. "They are everywhere I look."

"Yes," said Gandalf.

Frodo leaned down and carefully touched his finger to the sand. The shell lay open there. He straightened.

"I accidentally crushed one earlier," he said heavily. "I held it in the palm of my hand, and as I stood up, I unthinkingly clenched my hand. When I opened it, the shell was in pieces."

"And no doubt you have crushed many under your feet as you have walked on the sand each day," said Gandalf.

"Yes," said Frodo. "It seems impossible to avoid them. I feel like a great, trampling beast. And yet I can't stay away."

"Then don't," said Gandalf. "As beautiful as the shells may be, they will all be ground to sand in their turn."

"I suppose so," said Frodo. "At least, that is what I have told myself."

Gandalf smiled then. "Wise advice," he said.

"But," said Frodo, and Gandalf raised his eyebrows, "each of these shells, as small and delicate as they are, belong here. In the great, booming sea out there, or on this wide strand, through time short or long, each shell belongs. When I look at each one, I think of how it fits in a great, connected web of all life. The fathomless depths of the ocean does not trouble it, nor does its eventual fate of being crushed underfoot. Its beauty is of this unmarred place, and it feels mysterious to me in its simplicity and belonging. They are tiny but they feel more powerful than me. They feel unreachable, almost."

He looked up at Gandalf then. "Do I make any sense?"

"In part," said Gandalf. "And perhaps in time, in whole."

"What do you mean by that?" asked Frodo perplexed.

"That, my dear hobbit, I will leave to you to discover," said Gandalf. "But for now, I will leave you with the message I have been charged to bring. There is another celebration to be held in your honour tonight, and Bilbo hopes that you will be there. The Elves, or so he says, are clamouring to meet you."

Frodo made a face. "I cannot imagine Elves 'clamouring' over anything."

"Nor I," said Gandalf with a twinkle in his eye. "Nevertheless, Bilbo is right in that many greatly wish to meet you. However, they do not want to push you into anything before you feel ready, so I daresay they will make merry whether you are there or not."

"That is a relief," said Frodo fervently, "although I would like to please Bilbo," he added a little wistfully. "However, I do not wish to be held up as a great hero by the Elves. It feels... unnatural."

"And given what you know about Elves, and Bilbo for that matter," said Gandalf, "you truly feel that their wish to celebrate the one who carried the Ring to Mount Doom is unnatural?"

"I suppose not," said Frodo reluctantly.

"Good," said Gandalf. "Once you allow the Elves to celebrate according to Elves, and Bilbo according to Bilbo, it all becomes much easier. I assure you -- trying to change the opinion of a whole island's worth of Elves is a wearisome business!"

Frodo smiled then. "I would not wish to do that! I can't imagine actually trying to change the mind of even one. They're too..." he floundered for a moment. "Well, it is not for the likes of me to try anyways."

Gandalf stood. "You sounded like Samwise just then." He touched the cloth that still covered Frodo's eyes. "You may not have noticed, but the sun has set behind us. You might try taking that off."

Frodo did so and blinked in the twilight.

"Good," said Gandalf. "I will tell Bilbo not to expect you."

Frodo watched Gandalf walk back up the beach. Night came swiftly on Tol Eressëa -- more swiftly than Frodo even remembered in the Shire -- and already the first stars were pricking the sky above him.

He stood and wandered slowly to the water's edge. The gentle waves that touched his feet were warm.

On a sudden impulse, he threw his clothes from him and lay in the shallow water. Underneath him, the sand was soft and hard and giving all at once, and the waves flowed and retreated about his body.

Frodo could feel his hair lift freely and then settle each time the waters came. He stretched out his arms on either side and felt thousands of grains move through his fingers.

For a long time he lay like this. The water was at high tide, and so the waves stayed in both level and motion. Grains of sand continued to run through his fingers, flowing like silk in the waves. Thousands upon thousands of grains, Frodo thought and he looked at the stars above him.

He had seen stars spread in a jewelled carpet once before, in Hollin. There they had glittered, sharp and cold. Here, the stars didn't seem to burn as fiercely. Remote, they were, and Frodo felt small under them, but they were warmer, even gentler in some way. Yet they spread across the sky innumerable as the sand amongst his fingers.

Frodo thought of the shell he had crushed earlier. Many more were under his body. Sand flowed and washed around him, and the stars spread over him. All were uncountable, and once again he felt out of place. He did not belong.

"Yet I can belong in the Sea," he said out loud.

And then it were as if a voice spoke to him: "If you move with the waves and do not protect yourself."

"And I have learned that lesson," Frodo said, although to whom he did not know, "and I am grateful. But I feel lost and alone. Bilbo belongs here. He has moved here and lives amongst the Elves as if he were a fish meant to swim in these waters. Yet everything I do comes at a great effort. The least grain of sand belongs here--the smallest shell, the stars above--all one amongst many, but their smallness and insignificance does not trouble them in the least. They don't bother about "belonging", and so by their very indifference, they are where they ought to be."

The voice that was not a voice came again. "Then need you make such an effort?"

Frodo had no answer for this. He stood up and walked over the sand towards the low cliffs. Then, prompted by what he did not know, he looked back.

During the bright light of day, he could see the gleam and shine of sunlight inside glistening tubes -- as water curled over itself and crashed into foam. But now, near the end of dusk with only the dimmest of light, there was no horizon between land, sea and sky. Instead, although Frodo did not stand at the water's edge, it seemed as if, from his very feet, the darkness swept up right into the stars above. The wave crests were the only thing he could see as they climbed down out of the ink black and rolled towards him in neverending motion -- lines of pale foam that formed and broke and reformed.

The waves were as innumerable as the sand and the stars, Frodo thought. They did not worry about what they were. They were not overwhelmed. They just were, and so they belonged.

And then Frodo's mind wandered back many years and he saw Bilbo making a speech at his eleventy-first birthday party. "One gross," he had said and the hobbits of Hobbiton and Bywater were affronted. Yet the multitude of faces upturned, listening, were many belonging to a whole. No hobbit gave thought to their right to be there, or to live in the Shire. If one was a hobbit, one belonged.

Moved by a sudden joy, Frodo scrambled up the cliffs (as best he could in the dark) and headed for the dwellings of Avallónë. He found the place of the Elves' celebration and he sat down outside. From within he could hear Bilbo reciting some words of poetry amidst sounds of merriment.

As if answering a call, although Frodo had not made any sound, a tall, graceful figure appeared dark in the doorway against the light within, and then stepped forward. It was Celebrían.

"Frodo," she said and there was warmth in her voice.

"I am very little," said Frodo, and he laughed.

"You are," she said, smiling.

"It is rather a relief," Frodo said. "I am very small after all and only need to be myself. Everyone has made such a fuss over me, and been terribly kind. I thought that I needed to be larger than life somehow... and twice as natural as Sam would say."

"I can understand that that would be a relief," said Celebrían. "You are who you are, Frodo, and you are nothing more or less than that."

Frodo nodded. "Now I understand some of my names."

"In what way?" asked Celebrían.

"Mr. Underhill. The Halfling. I did not have my own name. When I could not use my own name and I had to hide my identity, I was Mr. Underhill. When the poems told of 'The Halfling', I was one halfling of many. I belonged to the land of the Halflings. I was small and I belonged, just by being who I was and nothing more -- no identity, just like the sand and the shells and the waves.

"Perhaps I can just belong here simply by being."

"You can, Frodo," said Celebrían, her voice rich. "You can."

And so Frodo stayed there, outside in the dark, content just to be and to listen. And Celebrían sat with him -- both under the sky of stars innumerable, silent and belonging.

To be continued