Author’s Notes

            Another small nuzgul with ears on this proved to be, and again a very persistent one.  I found it sitting beside the dryer looking quite pathetic and winsome.  Some of the smaller nuzguls will persist on disguising themselves as simple plotbunnies, and instead of writing a chapter or two I’ll find myself going off into a minor novella instead!

            We know from the Master that it took four days and two tries to get the shard of the Morgul blade out of Frodo’s shoulder, and that they were unable to successfully remove it until the very last possible moment.  Yet Frodo made an amazing recovery—the day after the shard was removed he awoke at ten o’clock in the morning to find Gandalf sitting by him and talked with him at length, then fell back asleep until late afternoon, dressed, joined his friends out on a terrace or balcony, and together were taken to a feast to celebrate the fact that Frodo had recovered.  A bit easier to believe, I suppose, than that after two weeks of induced healing coma he and Sam were taken out to be acclaimed by the Army of the West and the three greatest Lords among Men present after but a small breaking of their long fast, and then were allowed to dress in accordance to their new stations and brought to an outdoor feast.

            But what were those five days like for the four Hobbits who we are told spent much of their time watching by the side of an unconscious Frodo Baggins?  If Frodo was indeed at the point of joining the wraith-world with the Black Riders, I would think that all were in states of great anxiety. 

            For Merry and Pippin, the cousin who was like a much older brother to the two of them was on the point of being lost to them.  They obviously loved him dearly, and had conceived of that conspiracy to make certain he never slipped off out of the Shire alone.  They’d convinced Sam to join in the conspiracy and to spy on Frodo for them, and undoubtedly had browbeaten him into teaching them how to spy on him also when they were present in Hobbiton.  They’d hied off out of the Shire by his side, insisting that he needed them to survive the adventure he’d taken on.  And they did all of this secretly, with their parents, four of the most prominent and important of Hobbits in Shire society, ignorant of their plans.

            Bilbo must have felt unutterable guilt at realizing that he’d passed on such a terrible burden to this one who’d become the son of his heart.  To learn that Frodo had been pursued and wounded to the point of worse than death must have torn at him terribly.  We are told that he stayed at Frodo’s side through much of the time the younger Baggins was unconscious, but at the last moment decided to spend the time of the feast in the Hall of Fire instead, finishing up the Lay of Eärendil with a plate and bottle at his side. 

            And there was Sam—dear, not-so-simple-after-all Samwise Gamgee, who interrupted his courting of the fair Rose Cotton to leave the Shire at Frodo’s side, and who ended up spending better than half a year supporting his Master east and south into Mordor itself, tearing at his pretensions of  rustic ignorance and innocence, and going from confusing the sight of Caradhras for the Fiery Mountain he could barely understand to figuring out how to escape from a troop of orcs running to their dooms across the Morannon.  From a simple Hobbit gardener he rose to become Mayor of the Shire, the Master of Bag End and the Hill, Mr. Frodo’s heir and successor, an advisor to the High King, and a Prince of the West in his own right.  How did this transformation start?  Did most of it not begin there in Frodo’s sickroom?

            There aren’t a lot of stories out there of the removal of the shard from Frodo’s chest.  My favorite to date was the one by either Shirebound or Dreamflower in which they found they had to wait until the wraithing process was so far advanced that he’d begun to go invisible, making the shard visible to Elrond so that he at last knew precisely where to operate to excise it.  [Edited to add:  the aforementioned story is "By Chance or Purpose" by Shirebound.]  Not wishing to repeat such a theme, and not certain that the new wraith would immediately become invisible and shapeless, I had to imagine some other reason why the shard could not be removed the first time Elrond probed the nearly healed wound in search of it, and how they’d find it so precisely the second time.

            Some of the themes included in this tale I’ve been thinking on for quite some time, imagining some of them ever since the first time I picked up a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring in the late autumn of 1963, or the late winter months when I was first reading the Appendices to The Return of the King, not quite certain what all of this information about Celebrimbor and Númenor meant.  It was the third time rereading The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen in the summer of 1964 that I began to realize that perhaps Arwen had been part of the watch on Frodo while he was still unconscious. 

            It was Lindelea, of course, who inspired me to begin writing fanfiction for myself, and from whose work I borrowed so shamelessly—or at least at first.  But it was discussions on TheOneRing.net that caused me to begin analyzing Sam’s character.  The Master himself indicated that Sam had been a student of Bilbo’s from early on, perhaps from before the day Frodo arrived from Buckland to become old Mr. Bilbo’s ward.  Would such an individual be able to be totally innocent and untutored about Elvish history?  No, quite the opposite:  from the Master’s own writing we know he was familiar with the tales of Beren and Lúthien retrieving the Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown, of Eärendil and Elwing, and of the fall of Gil-galad.  No, obviously his rustic speech hid a far more educated and discerning mind than anyone had imagined—except, perhaps, for Frodo and Bilbo and Gandalf.  And there was some reason why, when he crashed the Council of Elrond, he was allowed to stay.  I would guess, then, that Elrond had already realized that not only could he not easily be separated from the Master he worshipped so, but that he had already proved himself integral to Frodo’s ability to survive the insults to his person and soul he’d already endured.

            In his own writing Tolkien basically ignored the practical and medical truths regarding comas.  Once the shard was removed, Frodo slept on that day and much of the following one, and then was apparently fully recovered, save for a growing ache where he’d been stabbed and an awareness that his hearing was now more sensitive than it had been.  Once the Ring was destroyed and Frodo and Sam rescued from the ruins of Orodruin, a magic healing sleep was put upon them for two weeks and when they awoke—acclimation and a big feast in that order!  But we know so much more detail of what happens in coma states, and how physically challenging it is to keep a person who is comatose from aspirating fluids into one’s lungs and either dying of it or developing pneumonia as a result.  Atrophy and pressure sores are also great dangers, as the muscles waste and every pressure point between the bed and one’s skeletal structure can become a sore that can ulcerate and perhaps become infected. 

            Elrond had been a healer for well over six thousand years at that point; he’d know of the dangers of merely allowing a body to rest unmoving and with no form of sustenance for such a period of time!  Without fluids Frodo would have been dead in a matter of days.  They had to have done something to keep at least fluids and necessary nutrients going into him, and to have dealt also with urination and excretions in their turn.  They had to have bathed him frequently, changed his position regularly, and watched over him for any sign that he was failing or that the shard was moving in for the wraithing at last.  And I strongly suspect that it was at this time that Elrond began recognizing that Sam was necessary for Frodo’s well being, whether or not Frodo Baggins was conscious.

            The PTSD doesn’t appear to have truly manifested itself until Frodo was back in the Shire and had given the duties of deputy Mayor over and had returned to private life.  Even then things are merely hinted at.  Supposedly Sam was largely unconscious of Frodo’s decline until he indicated he was leaving the Shire.  Yet Sam, who’d refused to allow Frodo to leave alone on what was assumed originally to be most likely nothing much more than a simple adventure, another tale of there and back again, is now willing to allow Frodo to give over Bag End to him and Rosie and see Frodo off to Rivendell, where he imagines Frodo intends to retire alongside Mr. Bilbo?  I’d say that for Sam to be willing to do such a thing, he had to realize that the situation was a good deal more serious than Frodo was willing to let on.  He had to recognize that the PTSD was causing Frodo to fade, either physically, spiritually, or both. 

            No, I cannot accept Sam to be a mere bystander in Frodo’s treatment in Elrond’s house—I’d imagine that he was involved in the process all along, and that he’d be encouraged to stay by Frodo’s side until it was determined that Frodo at last was recovering rapidly, at which time care would be exercised now to protect the health of what had been proved to be Frodo’s main pillar of support.

            Nor can I imagine that once the shard was removed that Frodo was totally back to normal almost immediately.  Indeed, the Master indicates that Frodo appears almost transparent, and particularly about the left hand where the effects of the shard were made manifest most strongly.  Gandalf is trying to appreciate how Frodo will continue to change, for he foresees that Frodo will possibly become as a vessel filled with light as with water, for eyes to see that can.  In other words, whatever process had been appropriated by Sauron to change Men to wraiths is not halted in Frodo; but instead of turning to Sauron’s evil purposes, Frodo instead will become something blessed, a creature of Light rather than Shadow.

            In the book Frodo merely sees Arwen sitting at the feast to celebrate his recovery, then in the Hall of Fire, sitting beside her father, and later still with Aragorn standing beside her in antique Elven armor.  Yet when he realizes that Aragorn is Bilbo’s Mannish friend who helps him with his poetry, he doesn’t notice any such armor.  Why would Aragorn leave the Hall at that point, slip off and put on such armor and return?  What would be the point of such fancy dress?  No, I’d imagine that Frodo was still feeling some of the now healing effects of the shard’s influence, magnified perhaps by sitting for some time under the spell of Elven music and in the direct presence of Gandalf and Elrond’s rings while wearing the One Ring on a chain about his neck.  So, in Realizations of Vision in my Through the Eyes of Maia and Wizard collection I have Gandalf seeing that in spite of his apparent recovery Frodo is still at least partially entranced, and is seeing not with the wraith’s sight given by the Ring, but with True Sight that sees behind the masquerades we take on in our current lives.  It is perhaps a foreshadowing of what Frodo can expect to know as commonplace once he has lived on Tol Eressëa for some time.  It is for this reason I have imagined from when I first began writing fanfiction that Frodo was going through some form of Becoming, metamorphosing into the creature of Light that Sam finds in my-verse when he comes to join his Master so many decades later in my stories, something that is still corporeal but is readying itself to shed the chrysalis of his body so as to become what he was intended from his creation to be in the end.

            I also rejoiced to examine Arwen’s nature, and enjoyed hinting at her relationship with Aragorn while not allowing any of the Hobbits to fully appreciate that in truth the pair were an item.  I intimated that at this point the standard she wrought for her betrothed was more of an open secret, and that at least some of her maidens were aware of it and conspired to give her time to work on it.  Some of her confidences with Sam are part of where I have Stirring Rings heading soon, as the reader can imagine.

            The Master tells us that the Elessar stone was given by Celebrimbor to Galadriel, by Galadriel to Celebrían, and by Celebrían to her daughter Arwen, who ended up entrusting it again to her grandmother to deliver to her beloved when he should come through Lórien once more.  The Elessar stone was one empowered particularly to healing and renewal.  The white gem that Arwen wore and in time gave to Frodo for his comfort and that has come to be called by many the Evenstar gem is unnamed by the Master, and its precise purpose is not stated.  However, considering that Frodo would hold it when he was under stress or appeared to be in pain or discomfort indicates that it, too, was most likely a gem intended to augment healing in some manner.  Elrond and his brother’s progeny were known to hold a particular gift for healing, and after the battle of the Pelennor Aragorn called upon Elladan and Elrohir to go with him as he went about Minas Tirith offering what aid he could to those who had been wounded or suffered from the Black Breath as being at least as skilled in healing as himself, having received the gift of healing through their heritage even as he had and undoubtedly having worked by their father’s side in the infirmary of Imladris.  Therefore it is likely that Arwen, also, had undergone training in healing, particularly as she was gifted with at least two gems that were associated with healing and/or comforting those who were in distress.  And so I have her sharing in the duties of attending on Frodo while he was in a comatose state, making her available to share some confidences with Sam and giving him knowledge that in time will prove important to him as he grows into his future roles.

            Another aspect of Arwen that is seldom explored is the manner in which her personal foresight might have been expressed.  We know that foresight was experienced by Elrond and by Elros’s descendants among the Dúnedain.  Aragorn is described as knowing a degree of foresight, as is true of both his maternal grandparents, Dírhael having foreseen that Arathorn would most likely die young and Ivorwen that it was therefore more imperative that he should marry Gilraen as soon as possible that his lineage not be lost, and that it was from a union between Arathorn and Gilraen that the hope for the Dúnedain should emerge.

            If the mortal descendants of Eärendil experienced this gift even as was known to happen with Elrond, who’d chosen Elven immortality, then to assume that his daughter would not also share this gift would most likely be wrong, and especially so considering she was also the granddaughter of Galadriel.  Galadriel appears to have used scrying, looking at the reflections offered by liquids, as the primary means of seeing afar into the past, present, and possible future(s).  And in doing so she used water from a natural spring fountain in her personal garden poured into a silver basin as her primary medium for the process.

            Tolkien tells us that Arwen watched over her beloved from afar; that she should turn to scrying in order to do so, particularly considering how long she must have lived in her grandparents’ realm, is therefore very likely, as she must have observed her grandmother doing this countless times and probably received instruction from Galadriel on how to follow the procedures.  So I imagine her keeping a more discrete silver or mithril bowl in her quarters and a large bottle of water from her grandmother’s fountain to fill it from for her personal use in keeping an eye on Aragorn on a fairly regular basis or when she realized he might be in personal trouble due to their assumed psychic link.  That she didn’t speak openly of her possible voyeurism by this means or easily admit to the fact she, too, was one who used scrying on a regular basis I think probable, and if questioned by Aragorn she was likely to feel somewhat embarrassed, being unwilling to let him think she was possibly spying on him.  I doubt he would be personally concerned that she was observing him by such a means, and may have even felt gratification at the thought she was doing so, particularly as he knew he never intended to do anything he’d be ashamed for her to see.  But suspecting she was skilled at the art, he’d very likely think to invoke that assumed skill in the necessity to find out just where and when her father should make the incision that would allow him to remove the shard.

            In my-verse Frodo is neither homosexual nor asexual.  He is a fairly normal heterosexual male who is as drawn to a pretty lass as any other male.  And in my-verse he has had his share of infatuations.  He’d thought to marry Pippin’s oldest sister, Pearl, who had purposely set out to draw his interest and hopefully marry him, beginning her campaign when she was still in her teens.  But just as Frodo is ready to go down on his knee to her, she has a run-in with Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, who tells her that as she understands it, Frodo has inherited the Boffin tendency to have heart conditions, and that it’s likely that it was this tendency that had led to the miscarriages that in my-verse were suffered by Frodo’s mother both before and after Frodo’s birth.  In my-verse Frodo himself had been premature and as a result suffered as a child from a mild heart murmur that he’d grown out of eventually.  From these two bits of information Pearl decides not to marry Frodo after all, having seen how devastated her mother had been due to a miscarriage suffered between the births of Pervinca and Pippin; and she realizes that she was more in love with the idea of being the wife to Frodo Baggins than she was with him as an individual. 

            Pearl’s rejection throws him into a confusion that lasts for some time before he finally realizes that he’s over her.  Suddenly he has the pick of the lasses—and a few widows and perhaps even a handful of unsatisfied wives as well—of the Shire.  Narcissa Boffin, first cousin to Folco Boffin, has loved Frodo quite as long as Pearl ever did, and Frodo begins at the Party to respond to her obvious love for him, only to find that once the Ring is in his pocket rather than Bilbo’s that he has totally ugly urges to force intimacy with almost any pretty Hobbitess who catches his eyes.  Thinking that there is a core of depravity at the center of his being, Frodo does his best to suppress his normal sexual responses and even awareness of pretty lasses as possible partners in physical intimacy.  When the Ring adds in ugly urges when he’s around attractive lads and even repulsive lasses as well, Frodo is even more distressed.  In time his deliberate attempts to distance himself from such urges becomes automatic, and no one can understand why Frodo, who as a child and youth had always talked of the day when as an adult that he would marry and have a family of his own to replace the family he lost when his parents died, is now apparently totally failing to respond to any lass he comes across as if she were a woman.

            Yet he finds himself drawn first by Goldberry, who he knows is the beloved of Tom Bombadil, so he suppresses his response to her.  Then the beauty and grace of the Lady Arwen is able to breach his defenses without raising such urges, although he realizes that there is no hope of ever knowing any sort of intimate relationship with her, considering her race, status, and family ties.  Also, he unconsciously recognizes she, too, is already committed to another.  Later, once the Ring is destroyed, in Minas Tirith he finds himself responding similarly with several other beautiful women, including Éowyn of Rohan, the young daughter of a craftsman who runs her father’s market stall in the Fourth Circle’s marketplace, and a former courtesan from Khand, each of whom has already given her heart to another.  By the time he returns to the Shire he first has too much responsibility to deal with to respond to Narcissa’s constant desire for him, and later he realizes that he has been so scoured by what he endured while carrying the Ring that even his health is fragile as a result, so he continues to hold her off, even though he recognizes that he is as attracted to her as she is to him.  By the time he realizes he’s only made matters worse for himself and that she would have made him deliriously happy had he only accepted what she offered for what time was left to him, it is too late.

            So Frodo remains a totally frustrated male virgin for the entire time he lives within Middle Earth.

            I know now that in his correspondence Tolkien indicated that ill health had no part in Frodo’s decision to take ship with the other Ringbearers, but when I first read Lindelea’s A Small and Passing Thing and found myself inspired to respond with For Eyes to See as Can, neither she nor I had read Letters.  I’d read a fair number of reports on the long-term effects of the starvation and stress suffered by Holocaust and other concentration camp survivors, and it is totally reasonable to think that the scars suffered by Frodo considering his physical, emotional, and spiritual wounds suffered during the quest went very deep indeed, leaving long-term physical damage likely to lead to deteriorating health as well as post-traumatic stress disorder in their wake.  I find once again that Tolkien’s own decision to ignore the probability of such potential for progressive physical deterioration to be unrealistic.  Therefore I will not apologize for continuing to allow this theme to run through my-verse.  Further reports on the long-term effects of the bites from certain ticks and many venomous spiders have only served to reinforce my own views that Frodo most likely was in a highly fragile physical state by the time he made the decision to leave Middle Earth, and that therefore his knowledge of his possible impending demise contributed to his decision to leave when he did.

            My Frodo has lived up to the meaning of his name indicating he is one who gains wisdom as a result of experience, but he is still not yet wise in all subjects.  He is still subject to the Baggins urge to appear to remain responsible and proper in the eyes of others, and part of the reason he fades from society is that he cannot easily admit that his health is decidedly failing.  He suffers from severe digestive problems from the combined effects of the period of starvation he endured, exposure to tainted water from the orc cisterns in Mordor, swallowing gases and ash from the volcano while traveling through Mordor, and sheer stress as well as from the long-term effects of Shelob’s venom.  All of these causes also contribute to heart disease, leading to increasing bouts of angina and congestive heart failure.  I do not have him developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease as well, although that, too, could be an expected result of his experiences.  I hint that he is suffering musculo-skeletal problems, however.

            That all of these experiences could contribute to long-term progressive physical conditions such as I’ve ascribed to Frodo Baggins is attested to by medical authorities of many kinds.  And part of the reason Frodo fails to follow through on his growing attraction to Narcissa Boffin is due to his own vanity.  He does not wish to allow anyone he cares for to see his physical scars, much less his psychological ones.  He does not wish to admit that his stamina has been impaired, and fears that he may prove physically impotent should he attempt sexual congress.  And he doesn’t wish to leave anyone he loves a grieving widow after what he fears will prove a very short and possibly unsatisfactory period as a wife.

            My vision of Frodo Baggins is still that of a normal mortal, one who is not and cannot be as perfect as he wishes to be perceived.  So he does his best still to appear unresponsive to the very women who capture his attention and stir his heart. 

            One minor error in this story has been brought to my attention--I have Shadowfax present in the field the second time Sam and others go out to see Bill, while in the original Gandalf parted from the great silver steed before entering the vale of Rivendell.  I apologize, but don't think I will bother to correct this, as it is such a minor point.  Merry and Pippin appear to have been aware that Gandalf had a horse that had come from Rohan, that being all they seemed to know about Rohan, in fact, before they actually arrived in that land.  So, I choose to imagine that Shadowfax accepted his dismissal from Gandalf's company after the removal of the shard rather than prior to it.  After all, the Master himself indicated that Pippin's father farmed land near Whitwell and later described the same person as the Thain of the Shire, so I think I can indulge in my own small discrepancies, may I not?  Heh!

            I apologize for allowing this nuzgul to distract me from other writing, but hope that it has managed both to entertain and to inspire thought and consideration of what life might have been like at this critical point in the progression of The Lord of the Rings.  I love helping to fill in the many gaps in the Master’s epic, and hope that this helps others to feel that the story is perhaps more complete than it was, or that it inspires others to consider just how else the situation might have happened in those periods that the Master has left to our imaginations.

Bonnie L. Sherrell

July 29, 2013

For those who have gone before.  B.L.S. (aka Larner)