Frodo

One evening, Sam came into the study and found his master looking very strange. He was very pale and his eyes seemed to see things far away.

“What’s the matter, Mr Frodo?” said Sam.

“I am wounded,” he answered, “wounded; it will never fully heal.”

*.*

Time went on, and 1421 came in. Frodo was ill again in March, but with great effort he concealed it, for Sam had other things to think about. The first of Sam and Rosie’s children was born on the twenty-fifth of March, a date that Sam noted.

(Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King)

(Both excerpts from Chapter: The Grey Havens)

He knew why he was ill. The day when Shelob poisoned him always brought upon him sickness. He rubbed his face wearily and quietly covered the food Rose had painstakingly put together for him. She didn’t know of his ill health and he made no effort to enlighten her. She fussed when Sam wasn’t there to do so. He tried to make her rest, heavy with child as she was, but she waved away his concerns. Their worry for him was greater. In truth, he was not fatally ill. The fever passed eventually. He laughed, and smiled, and took part in merrymaking, but he simply felt weary, like he needed rest that eluded him.

The wound never fully healed, and the poison never fully left his body. Being ill on the same day as he had been in the year before meant this would recur every year, probably for the rest of his life. The door opened and Sam came in. His face was light with joy and a bundle of blankets rested in his arms.

“It’s a girl, Mister Frodo,” Sam said happily. Frodo remained seated and smiled up to his old friend. He parted the blankets carefully and looked down at the new born, fast asleep in her father’s arms. Her cheeks were rosy red with small pink lips puckered outwards and a tuft of brown hair on her head.

“She’s beautiful, Sam.” Frodo said, smiling and briefly forgetting his illness.

This was what they fought for.