Chapter 33. What happened after

My Friend the brown wizard gives my neck a final pat and then falls silent and turns towards my companion. The rescued horse follows close behind him like a well-trained dog walking at heel, and belatedly I turn myself around and trail after them.

The falling snow is beginning to mount up on the great horse's back and lowered head, and sudden fear assails me. Perhaps he, like the trolls in my distant memory, has somehow turned to stone! ...something to do with the grey wizard...? Tall Hat, who first was falling and now is fallen – and lost to us. If he might have turned Youngest into a toad as a consequence for mischief, as the older cousins sometimes warned, then... then what sort of incomprehensible magic might stand before me?

I have never seen such a horse as my companion before. Perhaps he began as an impressive sculpture of an ideal horse, larger than life, and the wizard brought the stone carving to life? And now that Tall Hat has died, the spell is broken?

I shake my head and neck at such thoughts, which has the side benefit of dislodging the snow that has settled on my neck and back.

The brown one reaches my companion and stops. He seems to take no notice of the snow, not even the flakes clinging to his bristling eyebrows that stick out from under the shelter of his hood. In this moment, whitened by the snow settling on his head and shoulders (and eyebrows), with the white turning to grey as twilight descends upon us, I might take him for his not-quite-cousin, whose hat was sometimes difficult to distinguish in the heavily falling snow that beleaguered us on the side of the cruel Mountain. That ordeal remains uncomfortably clear in my memory.

He lifts his hand to caress the new horse's face, for that one now stands at his heels, head thrust over the wizard's shoulder, seeking safety or perhaps only comfort. I do not hear any words exchanged, but the horse lifts its head, turns and walks a few steps away, then paws away the fast-accumulating snow from the grass and begins to graze.

As I move closer, I hear the brown one speaking to the great horse in the way of Elves with equines, and then he sighs and continues aloud, using the words of Men, ‘And yet here is another charge on my hands, while so many other lives hang in the balance at this perilous time. I dare not tarry any longer than I already have.’

The illusion of stone-stillness is broken as my companion lifts his nose from the ground; but his head droops on his neck as if it is too heavy or he has become weak, somehow broken. I cannot... he whispers, his eyes half-closed in sorrow. 

The snow continues as if the clouds are weeping icy tears in commiseration.

The brown one says nothing.

My companion lifts his head a little higher. I do not think he sees me; he has eyes only for the wizard standing before him. I... he falters, and his head droops again. I lost my head, he says at last.

The brown one regards him for a long moment, then answers, It is a hard lesson. But better to learn it now than later, when you must keep your head and make your best speed as fell riders swoop above you, crying your doom and the end of the world!

My companion shakes his head as if to reject the wizard's words. My world has ended.

If a pony could weep, my eyes would fill with tears at the great horse's utter despair.

But the wizard reaches out to touch the bowed neck, and he says a curious thing. Endurance beyond hope is not the blessing of the small and meek alone, though such tenacity may come hard to one of the great whose strength has, to this point, allowed him to laugh in the face of danger and kick up his heels in derision at his enemies.

My companion lifts his head at this, and he stares directly into my eyes. What he is thinking, I do not know, for the brown one's words have blown right past me, dancing with the snowflakes on the wind.

But the wizard has one more thing to say. Begin again.

I... the great horse says, lifting his head higher. 

Endurance may require as little – or as much – as standing up after falling, and then taking the next step, the brown one says gently.

Foot by foot by foot by foot, I am moved to add, Merrylegs's version of our hobbits' "foot by foot".

I can hear my Friend's smile in his voice as he says, Straight from the pony's mouth you have it.

Foot... the big horse breathes. Foot by foot...

The wizard turns and rests his hand on my neck, and warmth and understanding seem to pour from his fingers into my very being. They are not words of guard and guiding, but something else for which I have no name. And, unlike the grey wizard, the brown one does not deem it necessary to tell what he has done. Perhaps if my Sam were here, my Friend would explain it to him, even as Tall Hat did. But my hobbit is not here.

When he takes his hand away again, I nod. It seems the right thing to do.

As I turn in the direction of the Road, I feel more than see my companion following me. 

Within a few steps, the blowing snow swallows up any sight of the brown wizard and the horse he has taken under his wing.

Considering his ability to take the form of an enormous Eagle, perhaps my parting thought is not so preposterous after all.

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Author's notes: 

Radagast's observation echoes something Gandalf says while carrying Merry from the Pelennor to the Houses of Healing in The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Gandalf names Frodo 'Endurance beyond hope' in an early version of the 'Many Partings' chapter of Tolkien's work. I took the liberty here of having Radagast describe humble but ever-faithful Bill in a similar way.

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