The sun does not let loose her tresses upon a day that I do not call Frodo to mind, seeking ever his safe footfall and the comfort of his heart. But at first neither here nor there could I discern, nor before or after. With mere fragments of vision I must be satisfied, for that is the way of such powers, as with the Mirror in the grotto.
The first I saw of him after the Fellowship’s departure, he lay motionless upon a rough-hewn slab. If he was bound, I could not tell for he was covered with a coarse blanket such as Men use in their battle camps. He smiled faintly when I entered the cave-like chamber where he lay. But his slumber was deep and he did not stir when a tall man came in, a dark haired Gondorian, armed and holding aloft a torch. He stood over the hobbit, his back to me. Frodo moaned softly and the man’s hand went out. I was seized with fear that the Man had come for the Ring and that all would be lost. Even if the Ring remained concealed and quiescent, Frodo was a stranger in the land of this soldier and could only be seen as a foe. But instead the man laid his warrior’s hand tenderly upon the hobbit’s forehead and smoothed back the tousled hair. He adjusted the blanket about the small form and when he turned to leave, I saw his own brow furrowed. Frodo, it appeared, was not well but he had transformed a deadly enemy into a friend.
Then, there came a day when I could not reach him, when all I saw were eddying mists breaking into formless darkness. But the following afternoon I beheld him again. As I walked through the upper meadows overlooking the Anduin, intending to clear my head, I heard a rustle in the matted grass. When I turned, I realized the grass had been stomped into a hard floor of gravel and bedrock. A sudden breeze stirred up a choking grey dust that covered the cliff wall and caught in the tattered flaps of cobwebs. A figure lay on the hard ground and as I looked, I recognized the ragged breeches and shirt of Frodo Baggins. He stared up at me trying to comprehend what he saw, his gaunt face, once so full of light, bleak and despairing. But I was prepared for his call. I reached out to him with a smile. Slowly, and with great effort, he raised himself on one arm and gazed at me. As recognition kindled to hope in his eyes, he seized my hand and drew himself up, setting his shoulders with such firmness as to give strength to his now so scrawny frame. Then, through lips cracked and grey as broken earth, he whispered as if in thanks, not my name, but that of Elbereth. I repeated the blessed words, begging that she hear him.
Now, days have passed since I have perceived Frodo and I fear the worst. Blowing ash replaces mist. I consulted with Celeborn and risked directing the beams of Nenya to the East, that I might see a way. Upon a brindled stone outcrop in the mountains, I sat for three courses of the sun and moon, seeking not the distance of space, nor even of time, but the distance of the present. I sought not the horizons of the earth but the depths of existence. But in vain. He is lost to me now and I must accept his destiny - as he has.
My descent was unmemorable except for the pall of sorrow that hindered every step as the leg irons of the orc. When Celeborn met me on the mountainside, I nearly collapsed into his arms.
‘Naught of Frodo,’ he said.
I shook the snow from my mantle and met his eyes.
‘Do not despair,’ he said.
‘No, we must not.’
‘How long has it been since he has passed through your sight?’
‘Since the last freshet…’
‘So long!’ alarm sprang into Celeborn’s mild gaze.
‘Yes. Felt more than saw, for this was real. He used the vial. I felt its golden light. He had need of it, you see. And now I wonder…’ I mused upon the frost in Celeborn’s lashes, lost in the beauty… and I thought of Frodo.
‘How will he do this?’ I asked.
‘If you mean how can he continue in his resolve…’ began Celeborn.
‘That is what I mean.’
‘Do you not know?’
I raised my eyes in question.
‘You are well acquainted with him, my Lady.’
‘But for long I was – distracted, where your initial judgments were unsullied and true.’
Celeborn turned me in his arms and we continued our descent, the first rays of the sun charging the ice-glazed outlines of the world about us with fire.
As I reflected upon the words of Celeborn, Beren and our Luthien came to mind, and I understood that Frodo’s path must be as theirs – hopeless but not certain.
‘Yes, I know… I DO know.’
I was unaware, when Frodo made his incomparable offer, of the charge that had been laid upon him, to let none handle the Ring outside the Company and only then in direst need. This, Mithrandir told me later, upon his return to Arda. And while I had sought an explanation for this apparent breach, Mithrandir did not. Indeed, as I set down what has passed here regarding the Ring-bearer, my own doubts have dissolved. Frodo’s choices sprang from his heart and his care for others. They are outside the confines of conceit and therefore, by my reckoning, beyond reproach.
Frodo offered me the One Ring out of compassion, sensing also that I could take it from him and was fairly close to doing so. He believed for an instant that offering up the Ring was his only hope of disarming it and because he still could! This was a moment of great relief to him, an unexpected moment of triumph over the Ring’s stranglehold on his will, even as it became a moment of revelation to me. In his modest act of generosity and by his example, I found again my own will. Had I not, neither Ring nor bearer would have escaped me.
Even I, never having borne or worn the Ring - can yet feel its influence. At times I cannot believe that it passed from me – that I let it pass, that I had enough will to leave the Ring of Power in the hands of one who had not the might to keep it from me. Yet he is mightier than I. Indeed, his strength of heart and spirit is unmatched in Middle-earth. May the Light of Earendil in its treasured phial, the only gift I could bestow, prevail through the darkness that seeks to overcome him.
THE END