CHAPTER 8
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Frodo started running, bunching the kerchief tightly in his fist. The path was not wide, and from time to time it almost disappeared among bushes and saplings and tall grass, but it was easy enough to follow. How far could Sam have gone? After a bit he couldn't run anymore and slowed to a walk. His lungs were aching. What if Sam had left the path? Frodo knew that Sam preferred to take shortcuts where he could, and he guessed that he would not want to be discovered on the path (a painful thought - he imagined Sam trudging along between these trees, alone, with his pack and his old grey cloak and no neck-kerchief, and his heart felt like breaking) but then, this land was strange to him, he wouldn't know anything beyond the path itself. Chances were Sam would have stuck to the path. He went further and further, and there was no sign or sound of Sam. He started to feel genuinely worried at being so far away from camp and the others, but none of those worries seemed as important as finding Sam. Oh, if Sam didn't, if Sam was lost... he had no idea, no word for these tangled feelings, for this sense of dread and hope all mixed up, but it made him start running again. How could he have been so blind? Next to Sam's unblinking, unassuming courage in leaving all he had ever known behind and following Frodo, simply because he cared about him, his own and Aragorn's brief and sudden alliance seemed like the reckless foolishness of spoilt and irresponsible youths. How could you not see the difference between crazed, heedless infatuation and lifelong steadfastness that asked so little for itself but gave so generously? And how deluded did you have to be not to know which one was the one that mattered? The sun was almost straight ahead of him now; already between the trees, and with the sun in his eyes he couldn't see much ahead of him, only enough to keep following the path. He couldn't run anymore, but the thought of turning back without Sam, leaving him to go away, and perhaps never seeing him again, was too awful, and he kept walking, refusing to lose hope. No Sam - it was unthinkable. It would hurt less to lose an eye. Frodo realised that he had hardly lived a day of his life, for years and years and years - practically since he first came to live at Bag End - without Sam, and that he would literally not know what to do with himself without his sensible and affectionate presence. Sam was the background to his every picture, the soil in which his life grew, the path that kept him walking straight. Without him, how would he walk? Talk? Raise a mug to drink? Even these simple actions seemed somehow to depend, for their very form and meaning, on Sam. It was as if he truly saw Sam for the first time in his life, and oh how it made him long to see him again, for real, not just in his mind's eye. His warm eyes, his mop of sun-bleached curls, his strong hands. The forearms that Frodo had so often watched when Sam was working in the garden with his shirtsleeves rolled up, his hands deep in mulch - lean wrists, long narrow muscles under sunburned skin. He had often watched, but he had never seen. He couldn't remember how it felt to touch Sam, although he had done it daily for years. Done it and never known it. Now he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that if he got the chance to touch Sam again, just to lay a hand on his shoulder, he would not be so oblivious. It seemed his hands had been running with gold and he had not had the sense to pay attention. If he would have to live the rest of his life without Sam - it would be like a different hobbit existing instead of him, one that had not been so fortunate as to have Sam near all his life. A whole world, it seemed, would disappear, the door would close on years and years of unquestioned closeness, and Frodo would be alone in a way he could not even imagine. If he lost Sam, he realised with an agonised shiver, he would lose himself, too. Perhaps he already had. Suddenly there was an opening in the trees ahead, and Frodo was so tired, so heartsick and so full of unresolved woe and unnamed longing, that he walked into it almost without noticing. When he lifted his head, a meadow opened up in front of him, green and rippling silver in the slanting sunlight. Beyond was a stream, a river almost, and on the other side dark woods. The late sun poured molten gold on the surface of the pond where the stream collected in deep, slow stillness. The rushes and reeds along the edges burned with colour, and gave off a dry, papyrusy smell that mixed with the sweeter scent of the sun-baked turf. Frodo stood for a moment, head swimming with the drowsy, sun-drenched stillness. After the shade under the trees, it was as warm and comforting as an afternoon in the Shire - just a stream, some rocks, some grassy banks, at the end of the day. It was magical, but it was a magic that felt like home. To one far from home, it was both comforting and sad. Suddenly a splash broke the oily golden surface. Frodo's heart nearly missed a beat, and he looked around, as rings slowly spread on the water. And with a surge of relief and a little shiver deep inside, he recognised the outline of the little figure perched on a rock just at the water's edge. Against the golden sunshine, no detail was discernible, but to Frodo the angle of the head, the shoulders, the very slump was as familiar as the shape of his own hands. He started to run, Sam's name already in his mouth - Sam, where have you been? How could you even think to leave me? - but hesitated, and came to a stop after a few steps. What might Sam think on seeing him there? Heaven knew he would have reason to be unforgiving, Frodo reminded himself uncomfortably, his elation subdued at once. He deserved nothing but the harshest words from Sam. Finding Sam, Frodo realised, was not the same as being within sight of him. Sam had strayed far from home, and rather than helping, Frodo had only added to the distance between them. His heart went out to the slouched, sad-looking little silhouette, and he bit his lip. You know me better than I do myself, he thought, realising with wonder and gratitude that it was true. What can I possibly do in return for that? He wanted to talk, to explain, to make words an offer of forgiveness, but if he was right about Sam's feelings, he saw now that he was the one that needed to be forgiven. He had been blind, deluded, crazy, and he had been guilty of the cruellest unfairness to Sam's loyalty and love. Whatever Sam did, he did for Frodo's sake, and that had not changed, whatever some might say. Frodo needed not to talk, but to listen, listen as if his life depended on it. He collected himself with deep breaths to still the trembling in his stomach. Then he walked slowly towards Sam, and the tall, whispering grasses were cool and silky against his legs.
Sam felt cold, despite the melting golden sunshine drenching the landscape. The rock was rough under his hand. He stared at the water without seeing it. He had hurried away from the camp, brushing a few insistent tears away with the heel of his hand, and only stopped after a few minutes to strap his rolled-up bed to his pack. He had walked and walked and walked, his head empty, only knowing that he somehow seemed to have taken a decision and that this was it. He tried not to think of Frodo, tried not to imagine what he might think when he found Sam gone. Would he be relieved? Would he heave a secret sigh and move his bedroll to the ranger's side that very night, Sam already forgotten? He blinked and walked. Naught to be done about it now, he told himself. He had been told to remove himself and he had. So why did every step hurt as if the path was covered in broken glass? The next time he raised his eyes from the road he was almost surprised - how long after? - to find himself on a riverbank. He looked about. They had not crossed any rivers other than the Nimrodel on their way into the forest, and this was definitely not the icy, rapid Nimrodel. This was a slow, deep, gently swirling forest stream, no more than ten or twelve spans of clear brown water, Sam reckoned. What now? He walked upstream for a perhaps half a mile, looking for shallower sections where there might be stepping stones. Nothing - just grassy gently sloping banks, reeds and the sound of the wind in the trees on the other side. He sighed and turned and started walking down stream instead. The banks widened into a gently ruffling meadow, just where the stream became a quiet pool. Sam climbed a rock and saw that not far below, the river went over a little rocky ledge, like a natural weir, and grew faster before bubbling and rippling contentedly away into the forest again. There were no shallow places, no stones and not a single handy fallen tree. Sam slumped down on the rock and let his pack slide off his back. It fell into the grass below with a thump. He didn't know how to swim. Below the rock the water was shallow enough for him to see the pebbles on the bottom, but further out it deepened into murky mystery. He picked up a rock and threw it into the water. He could walk upstream, or downstream, he supposed, but who knew where that might lead? Lost in thought, Sam sat for a while looking at the gently undulating surface of the pond. As the afternoon breeze lay down, the warm air gathered and shimmered over the meadow and the rocks, heavy with scents melted out of trees and greenery by the sun. Insects hovered and ringed the smooth surface. The sun sank lower, the light turning to a golden blessing on the water and the rocks and even on Sam's curly, downcast head. Where was he going, anyway? Home? Sam suddenly felt as if there had been a huge mistake, that he didn't actually have a home anymore. The Shire would still be there, but there were other kinds of homes apart from villages and houses, other places where your heart might rest. It had been no more than an inarticulate hope, a remote possibility, no more real than the diamonds of sunshine on the bottom of this pond. Nevertheless it had soothed his heart and brought him courage and comfort to think about it, imagine it to be true, from time to time when he couldn't sleep, or when he felt small and far away from home. It was at such times that it was worth more than gold to be able to turn your head and look at someone and remember that you *were* home, really, somehow. Lost in the swirling, shimmering patterns down in the water, he didn't at first distinguish the little noises among the humming and buzzing and rustling of animals and insects. He didn't lift his head until he became aware of the still shape in the corner of his eye. Frodo was not looking at him. He was sitting close, but not too close, looking at his hands and fidgeting a little. There was a hint of a sad wrinkle between his brows, and his cheeks were blotchy, as if he had been crying. How could this be? Several seconds passed. Frodo didn't say anything, and Sam, still speechless, didn't know what to do. He couldn't tell if Frodo was angry still, or sad, or how and why he came to be there at all. Eventually, Frodo spoke. 'Tell me, Sam. Tell me truly why you did it.' Frodo's voice was so low it could not possibly have been heard by anyone farther away than Sam. 'I didn't mean no harm, sir, I swear and promise I didn't,' Sam said after a moment's hesitation. Frodo nodded, still looking at his hands. Sam didn't know what to make of it, of the difference between the hissing, furious Frodo from earlier and this quiet hobbit sitting next to him and listening so intently Sam didn't know what to say. He couldn't remember Frodo giving him such complete attention, ever, and for a second he was afraid that such openness would just swallow him up and he would be undone. But he knew a second chance when he saw one, and suddenly there was no bitter anger, no resentment. Frodo was there. Sam pulled his courage close. 'Well, I don't rightly know what came over me, sir, to tell the truth.' He drew a deep breath. 'I was just so angry, and I felt so lonely, if you don't mind, sir. And then when I saw yous... well, holdin' hands and that, it just made me...' Their eyes met, briefly as a dragonfly's wingbeat. Sam felt somehow reassured, as if a hand holding his heart had suddenly loosened its grip. 'And I guess I was a bit jealous, too, just as you said. You were right enough I reckon.' He smiled a little, and Frodo gave a tight uncertain smile back. 'Except that I wasn't out to ruin anything, I wasn't jealous like that... I didn't know what I meant to do, only that I... and I went over there, and...' His voice failed. He couldn't look up. 'One thing led... It wasn't my meaning to...' He sighed.'It's the sort of thing, if you've said A, you've got to say B, if you get my drift.' He blushed. 'He would've known it wasn't yourself, sir, otherwise... course, he did anyway. More fool Gamgee.' He managed a skewed smile, but this time Frodo didn't smile back. Sam swallowed. Frodo didn't say anything. 'Guess I've never really felt that way before, angry, like that, if you know what I mean,' Sam tried to clarify, nervously. 'With me... or with him?' Frodo was still looking at his hands. 'Him, of course!' Sam cleared his throat. 'Never been angry with you yet, Mr Frodo,' he mumbled. 'Exceptin' this afternoon, and I didn't really mean that.' There was a long, fragile silence. Sam could hear Frodo draw breath to speak, and hesitate for a long moment. He knew he should stay quiet and let Frodo speak, but nerves got to him, and he spoke just as Frodo did too. 'It wasn't -' 'Did you - ' Frodo stopped and made a vague encouraging gesture. Sam blushed. 'Sorry.' 'No, you go ahead, Sam.' 'I just wanted to say - it wasn't for a lark. I didn't... you know... it wasn't... It wasn't fun, if you take my meaning.' Frodo nodded once, briskly, looking away briefly before speaking again. 'Why then?' He flashed Sam a look that was both eager and uncomfortable. 'This is awful, Sam, but I am sure that if you think about it... you understand why I have to ask.' 'That's all right, sir,' Sam said, gently. How wonderful this was, he suddenly thought, irrationally. He took a deep breath and thought hard. Then he started over, with Frodo's eyes in his. 'It was to teach him a lesson, sir.' Sam blushed. 'I know I ought'n't to say such things, but that's the truth. I just wanted to show him that he didn't know what he was doing, that he wasn't the right one...' Sam hesitated, finding the right words. 'He had no right, Mr Frodo,' he said at last. 'No right.' He thought a strange look passed over Frodo's face then, as if he had lost a fraction of his attention for a second or two to a distraction or a sudden remembrance. But then his gaze came back to Sam's, and he nodded. 'I think... I think I see,' Frodo said. And ever so warily, after hovering a long time between them, his hand settled over Sam's on the rock next to him. Sam got a strange feeling in his stomach as he looked down. 'I didn't mean a single thing I said, Sam,' Frodo said, frowning, one word at a time. 'You must believe me.' 'I do, course I do.' 'I don't know how to unsay it. I *can't* unsay it, so it's up to you, Sam, but I beg you... I behaved like an oaf, Sam. I was lost, I couldn't see... Oh, I've been such an idiot.' 'It's all right. Don't say that, sir. It's all right, I believe you.' Frodo looked out over the still, golden water. He drew a deep breath. Neither of them spoke for a minute. Sam stole a look at the hand resting in Frodo's lap, and saw for the first time what it was that Frodo had been fiddling with. It was his own faded old neck-kerchief. For some reason, seeing that in Frodo's hand made him feel strangely upset, as if something inside him was clamouring to be let out. 'This river, it reminds me... It's like the Brandywine at home, isn't it. Except smaller.' Sam nodded, a bit surprised at the abrupt change of subject. But there was a look on Frodo's face that made him stay quiet and listen. 'That tree we saw yesterday... do you really think it might grow at home?' 'Don't know, but I'm going to try, if I ever get to go back.' Frodo hesitated a moment. He frowned down at the neck-kerchief in his hands. 'Do you remember, Sam - you would have been very little, but anyway - do you remember that the Brandywine rose very high once, many years ago? The weather had been very strange, and then there was a season of rains, downpours like nobody had ever seen, and the water rose and the river broke its banks. The water went everywhere, flooding the roads and the fields and even into people's houses and smials and barns. Fences were broken down and there was mud everywhere.' Frodo met Sam's eyes. 'It was quite frightening - that quiet river, suddenly uncontrollable, breaking and ruining things. But eventually, after a week or so, the waters found their way back to the river bed and everything was put in order again.' Sam nodded. He didn't remember any of this, but he sensed that it did not matter. 'And the Brandywine becomes a great river once it leaves the Shire, and it flows all the way to the sea, along its foretold course. 'I think,' Frodo said slowly, eyes on Sam's, 'that the river was looking for something. And it found it right where it had come from, in its own old banks, where it belonged.' Sam nodded. 'There was damage, but nothing that could not be mended or rebuilt,' Frodo said quietly, his eye's on Sam's, stilling Sam into breathless listening. 'And perhaps not all the consequences were bad.' Sam's throat felt thick. Somehow he knew was Frodo was talking about, and in a flash he remembered the broken dam, the drawing of the flowers, but it was too much, he didn't have words for the right answer. If Frodo was a river, then he would ask no better than to be its banks, whether the waters were untamed or still, but that was not the sort of thing Sam could bring himself to say out loud. An insistent little voice inside him said that a simple way to deal with the entire thing would be to just wrap his arms around Frodo and not let him go for a long time, and to block it out he said: 'I guess I was well out of order, too, Mr Frodo. It's just that... I couldn't have borne seeing you ending up broken-hearted, and that's just how it is.' Frodo looked away. Sam felt suddenly afraid he had said too much, or not enough, or too feebly, too something, and he held his breath for several heartbeats. 'How come you bother with my heart at all, Sam,' Frodo said at last, in the smallest voice. 'Oh, now, Mr Frodo, I mean... course I...' He blushed. 'That is to say, you know I do, Mr Frodo.' 'Do I?' Frodo whispered, eyes never leaving Sam's. And then Sam couldn't hold himself, he didn't know who moved first, but they met halfway and then they were in each other's arms, Frodo was melting into him and one of Sam's hands went up to Frodo's hair. Frodo's face was in Sam's collar, buried, breathing there, and his arms were holding Sam hard and close. Sam forgot everything else. He felt every breath with such intensity that he was almost dizzy. After long moments in which Sam's hands did their best to memorise the texture of Frodo's hair and clothes, the feeling of firm flesh under loose clothing, the warmth of the embrace, Sam looked at his master, reluctantly breaking the closeness. Frodo's face was flushed now and glowing in the warm evening light. Frodo looked back at him, squinting a little between shiny, dark brown lashes. He smiled, both shy and relieved, and Sam somehow knew that the home he had dreamed of was not lost. The possibility no longer seemed remote, and the hope... that never-spoken hope was no longer inarticulate, somehow without Sam noticing, in the space of a simple hug, it had become fluent... eloquent. Before he had come to the end of the thought, his lips were touching the corner of Frodo's mouth. Frodo's lips opened a little, half in surprise and half in wordless acquiescence, and Sam's hand, which was still at the back of Frodo's neck, brought him home ever so gently. He felt pliable, soft as butter, to Sam's hands, but just as his body was beginning to mould itself against Sam's, he gasped into Sam's mouth and pulled back. 'Sam. Samwise.' His breathing deep. The shadow of a question there, and Sam's heart nearly stopped. Then: 'Sam!' And with a tug on Sam's jacket he was back, his hands in Sam's hair, his eyes softly closed, and it was hot like the sun on Sam's back, slow as the lazy golden stream, and the sweet savour of his master's mouth was like the perfect intoxication he had waited for all his life. Sam couldn't get enough. It had all been worth it, now that it came to it, for this was redemption and redress not just for a few days, but for a whole lifetime, more generous and more overpowering than he had ever dared to hope. He moved to hold Frodo even closer, but slipped and slid down the side of the rock, and between kisses, with Frodo's hands locked on his jacket collar, he ended up standing in the water to his knees, with Frodo still sitting on the rock, leaning slightly over him. He wrapped his arms around Sam's neck and Sam tilted his face up to let his master take what he would, learning about Frodo's cat's kisses, little flicks of his tongue on Sam's lips. Frodo was making faint, eager noises with each breath and soon Sam's open mouth found the vibrating throat and made Frodo's head fall back. Sam's tongue dipped into the hollow between the smooth collarbones, tasting salty, sharp, slightly sweaty skin and savouring that same scent that had nearly made him lose his sense earlier, but this time close, carried on the heat of Frodo's living skin. Then Frodo sat up again and grasped Sam's collar, looking down at him from arm's length. Frodo's mouth was open, the lips awakened to vibrant, trembling life. Sam had never in his life seen anyone look so maddeningly beautiful. He'd renounce food, drink, the very air he breathed, for the right to kiss that mouth again, touch that skin, if he didn't already have that right as surely as he had a name. 'I don't ever again want to be farther away from you than this, ever, in my life,' Frodo said between breaths. 'I want to be able to reach out for you wherever, whenever.' Sam wrapped his arms around Frodo's waist and held him, hard, with his cheek pressed against his chest. Frodo was murmuring, like one possessed, with his arms around Sam's head, and the words reverberated through them both, escaping the cage of Frodo's ribs and vibrating straight through every clenched muscle in Sam's body. 'If the day comes when you aren't there I won't know what to do with myself, Sam, I swear, I didn't know, Sam, I didn't see, don't ever ever ever...' Sam half lifted, half pulled Frodo off the rock and into the water. 'Be with me, Sam, don't ever let me leave,' Frodo murmured, and Sam answered soundlessly, I am here, with his lips against Frodo's cheek, and they were kissing again, Frodo's leg coming up to wrap around Sam's as if to bring him even closer. Sam lowered his arms to Frodo's hips and lifted him, and carried him to the riverbank. Frodo's hands moved from his shoulders then, and no bone or muscle of Sam's resisted as he was pulled down into the grass. Once there, Frodo squirmed and hooked his leg over Sam's, as if he was seeking to keep him there, keep him as close as could be. Looking *down* at Frodo's face was just as heartstopping as Sam had thought it would be. And now that they were there, and there was no turning back, Sam took all his courage and put some careful deliberation into the next kiss, touching Frodo's mouth as lightly as the sun, until Frodo couldn't keep a strangled little sound from escaping him, and lifted his head to chase Sam's elusive mouth with his own. It wasn't far away, and Frodo grabbed the back of Sam's neck and closed his eyes with an appreciative murmur, and his mouth on Sam's became slow, luxuriant, hinting at a messy, voluptuous greediness that Sam had never imagined him capable of and that took his breath away. 'Frodo,' he said, low down, near the skin, and just because he could. 'Oh, Samwise,' Frodo said when Sam pulled back to look at him. 'You are...' and he pulled his head down with his fingers in Sam's hair. 'I don't know where I have been without you,' he murmured between kisses. 'How could I not see? How did I live so long without. Oh, come here, you.' He caught Sam's face between his hands. 'Without *you*, there would be no me either, do you understand that, Sam? Don't you ever, ever leave me again.' 'I love you,' Sam said.
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