I sit beside the fire and think
of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
in summers that have been;

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair.

Grandmother rarely reads to them anymore, but that doesn’t stop Sandra from asking.  Her eyes are failing, filmed over; and her thoughts are like ivy, tripping every which way in no particular direction, covering everything, so that you can’t see what they were founded on unless you look very, very closely.  Dad says it’s age, and the natural order of things, but sometimes Sandra wonders if it’s more than that, if somehow too much of everything has wearied her, has caused her to fade like a flower left to dry in the sun.

It doesn’t stop Sandra from asking, but the answer must needs be no, so Grandmother asks her if she’d like to hear a story instead, and Sandra says, yes, please, and settles the old wool blanket about her grandmother’s frail shoulders and sits at her feet.

It starts out with tales from the books, for that is after all what Sandra asked for, but Sandra doesn’t have a head for the old elvish myths and is grateful when the talk turns to other things.  Again the sweet old voice takes her to Minas Anor shining bright in the sun, and she burns envious of the young hobbit maiden with the golden hair riding in with her heroic father and dear mother, serving Her Majesty and wearing fine silk dresses.

She knows, of course, that Elanor Gamgee, Elanor Gardner, Elanor Fairbairn, was once accounted one of the most stunning beauties of the Shire, was so fair they almost thought her elvenkind, but Sandra never saw that in her.  She saw her as a queen, one of the majestic queens of Men of old, for elves did not age and she had never seen her grandmother young.

“I have seen a good many things in my time,” Grandmother says, abruptly, stopping in a long description of Annúminas in winter.

“I wish I could see them for myself,” Sandra says.

“Maybe you will.”

I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall ever see. 

For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring
there is a different green.

As she thought, Grandmother stands up for her when they find out what she did with the Book.  She is grateful: she knows she was rash, and she knows it was not wholly a smart thing to do, but there was the need there, the need for others to know.  She felt, when Kira visited, something like a great bird trapped inside that one’s heart, flapping to get out, and if only she could show her to open the cage she would spring free and soar.  She wonders if this was how Beren had felt when he was cutting the Silmarils from Morgoth’s crown: first the one, then the other.

She knew the story.  The blade snapped, and they barely got away with their lives.  But if it was overreaching, it was still the right thing to do, wasn’t it?

After everything cools down she tries explaining this to Grandmother, but the words come out all funny and she falls silent.

But Grandmother takes her hands in hers, and says that she understands and she forgives her; for has not that same desire, to know and make known, driven all that she has done?

Sandra does not remember too much of the Falling-Out, not because she was too young to remember but because she was too young to understand it at the time, much less be involved; but she remembers how voices were raised and tears were shed and an aching loneliness crept upon their household.  Once she was out of bed when she should not have been, listening at the door, and she heard her grandmother’s voice:

“Confound them!  Confound them and all the hobbits of the Shire if they think they can get Faramir to do this!  He’s the representative of the King!  How in the blazes is he supposed to—”

“Hush, Mother.  The children are abed.”

“If they would just go and see for themselves that the world has changed, that—”

“But by all sights it hasn’t, not to them.  You know what they’ve found.”

“They haven’t found everything yet.”

Heart hammering, blood rushing through her face, she withdrew.  She had never heard her grandmother use language like that before.

And when they received word of the abdication, Elanor wept.

Sandra still finds that odd.  She remembers even less of her grandfather’s funeral, but she does not remember Elanor weeping that much.

Later, when she learns of her own catastrophe, she will recall those tears and imagine them mingling with hers.

I sit beside the fire and think
of people long ago,
and people who will see a world
that I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think
of times that were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.

Grandmother tells her things that aren’t in the Histories.  “Tell me about your dad,” she says, and she doesn’t hear of facing down spiders or near starvation but scrapes kissed better, dirt clogged under fingernails, a face wrinkling with smiles, stolen wistful glances westward.  Her mother is a bastion of love, always living, always doing something for someone with joy.  She even mentions walking into their room when Daisy was too much to handle and discovering that it was the wrong time to do so.

Sandra pretends not to know why she is telling her all these things, these mundane remembrances of a life lived so long ago, but she does.  Mother says she is “not long” and she can feel her grandmother’s ancientry pulling her into history.

Peregrin I becomes not the stern, yet wise Thain of history but a bright and worthy adversary.  Meriadoc is a fellow steward of lore, who charged her ere his departure to “keep an eye” on the whole Shire for him.

And Frodo Baggins is a loving whisper in the mists of time.

They are all just paper recollections to Sandra, woven of word and picture, never flesh or sight or sound.  As Elanor breathes life in them all she can see is how brittle they must be compared to the richness of living memory.

The names Grandmother uses come from another world, a world of gaffers and gammers, a world of dust.

And yet Elanor is still here, telling her these things.

“He said I would be a bridge between the Ages.  But I do not know how much longer I shall last.  I am failing, Sandra dear, and they are calling me onward when I sleep.  I miss them, my beloved ghosts.”

She does not tell her much about Fastred.

In September she asks for her old things and distributes them round to the family.  Sandra gets a golden ring with an opal in it, one that she used to think was magic when she was younger.  They take turns sitting with her, now, holding her hand even though she sleeps most of the time.  Father writes and her aunts and uncles draw near.  Those of the eleven remaining Gamgees who can make it also journey over.  Undertowers is filled near to bursting.

One day Grandmother awakens, turns her milky eyes on her, and says, “Sandra, dear, what’s to-day?”

Sandra tries her best to smile and says, “Why, Grandmother, it’s the twenty-second of September.”

“The twenty-second, eh?  That’s a good day to start a journey, don’t you think?”

And when she falls asleep, she does not wake up.