Chapter Thirteen

Boromir looked at Frodo’s four-fingered hand with a mixture of shock, horror, pity, and awe. He had seen worse injuries in Gondor but those were to soldiers who were trained to know it may happen. To see such on one who had not been was horrible.

“I am sorry, Frodo, I am so sorry.”

The Ring-bearer looked at his maimed hand. “This is what saved Middle-earth from my folly,” he said. “Sharp teeth tamed for a moment my sharp lust.”

Boromir’s astonished horror increased. “Teeth? Someone bit your finger off?”

Frodo continued to look at the gap in his hand. “Yes, Smeagol did, just before he fell with the Ring and both perished in the Fire. He died happy, holding his Precious. I still burn.

“I don’t remember what happened. I only know what Sam told me he saw and heard. How I said I would not do what I had nearly died to do and how I claimed the Ring as my own. With each step I took toward Mordor, even before I left my home, I knew I would not be able to give it up. I thought that meant I would die with it, for I knew it had be destroyed. But Smeagol died in my place. Sam told me how he saw us fighting and how it ended with Smeagol biting the Ring off and I kneeling at the edge of doom itself. I wonder what I was fighting him for. Was it so I could destroy the Ring and myself in order to save our world or was it because I could not bear to let anyone else have it? Gandalf had told me of the torment I would feel to see Sauron possess it once more and to know it was no longer mine. I feel that now. It is gone and I remain.” He looked away at last and into Boromir’s eyes. “Will the fire ever cease or will I burn until I go mad and my body fails at last?”

Boromir had no answer. He merely did what he had wanted to do for some time, what he knew his brother would do, what he had done himself when he and Faramir were lads. He held out his arms. Frodo entered the man’s embrace and wept. Boromir held his friend tight and remembered how his mother used to hold him and stroke his hair. Tentatively he reached out and did the same now. The pain he felt flooding from Frodo was even more than he had felt from Faramir when the young boy wept after their mother’s death. He stood as a rock battered by a great storm but undefeated by it as the waves swept around and over him. Boromir felt how the hobbit’s body trembled with the force of the torrents of pain that howled around and through him and knew Frodo needed a strong fortress to brace himself against the onslaught.

“Scream, Frodo, if you wish. Let it out.”

The Ring-bearer did so, muffled as it was in Boromir’s chest. The sound broke the man’s heart as he held on tighter and felt Frodo’s arms hold him all the more. As much as he felt he was cradling a child, the warrior knew well he was not. This little one had suffered more at the hands of the Nameless than any he had known. He wondered if perhaps the torment was too large for even the two of them together to handle. Certainly it was too much for the Ring-bearer himself to bear. There had been times in Gondor that Boromir wished he had counseled others to scream in an effort to release some of their agony. But it was not their way. Outside of nightmares, the only times he had ever heard such were anonymous cries beyond the City walls. They were almost animal howls but all the more a wrench to the heart because he knew they came from a man tested and tried beyond his limits to endure. Such a sound was not heard again, not from the same throat. Sometimes later they would find a body. Sometimes not. Other screams were sometimes heard, always once only. Sometimes Boromir thought he recognized them. He thought sometimes Faramir did so also. They did not speak of it, but sometimes his brother’s sorrowful eyes met his. Recognized or not, it was during those nights that Faramir’s observation of the Standing Silence stretched longer and Boromir knew he was remembering the sound and commending the tortured man to the Powers.

Boromir longed once more for Faramir. He determined that if Frodo was willing, he would take him to Gondor to see him. Much as Boromir had grown to love the hobbits in the Company and had been cheered by their innocence, joy, and devotion to each other, it was that very innocence that could perhaps not be of avail to heal Frodo of the deep wounds that were within but all too apparent. Love could mend much, but sometimes it was those who had seen and been touched by the darkness that could help aid those so scarred in a way the unshadowed could not. Faramir had seen and suffered for those who had been struck by the evil that stalked and at times penetrated the borders of Gondor. His tender and compassionate heart could help Frodo a great deal Boromir thought. Even more, he wanted to bring the Ring-bearer to Aragorn who had healed him of his own lust for the Ring. Surely the king could do the same for Frodo. But Boromir would not force the hobbit’s will as he had tried to before. He knew such was only a tool of the Enemy and he would not be used that way again.