The Adventures of Frodo Gardner
Volume VI He Clasped Her Fast, Both Flesh and Bone By Dolores J. Nurss
Chapter 19, Part 203 A Reunion, of Sorts July 6-7,1452
“We must do it by night,” Elenaril had advised, in her capacity as a
healer, well-versed in the ways of poison, “When the sea-winds will
blow the smoke away from the houses–we do not know what evil such a
smoke might carry.” After a show of argument the Mayor conceded to the
necessity. Not just the dangerous hour troubled her; it clenched her
heart to deliberately burn a large chunk of field growing food. Yet
when the Master Gardner informed her that this new vegetable, these
rich and starchy “taters”, could draw poison from the soil, she bowed
to the necessity, clasping Harding’s hand in her anxiety, though only
Frodo’s sharp eyes caught it.
Another sword shrilled when Lanethil plunged its glowing metal into the
water. Harding had quickly sought and spoken to the bravest and the
hardiest of the villagers (Fishenchips and Bergil among them) winning
promises to meet at twilight in the potato patch above the town. Now he
and Lanethil labored side by side, making swords for them all, more
swiftly than ever they did under the whips of Sauron. Sweat darkened
and curled the Dark Elf’s locks as he bent over his work, glistening
between the furnace and the blast of summer wind, and the bared muscles
of the mortal beside him shone like polished stone. All day the
pounding rang through the village, skipping across the walls in a
shattering of echoes. All day people brought fuel for the fires from
their own meager store, eating their noon meals cold. Sparks flew up,
and steam, so that it seemed a dragon lived within the village. But the
people would not quail, this night, from the things that crept by
darkness.
Nor did Frodo and Nibs, nor any other farmer, sit idly by. They flooded
the fields all around the one condemned to burn, but left that one to
parch, even shoveling stone and gravel from the irrigation ditches so
that these would dry the quicker under the relentless Mordor sun.
Frodo could hardly wait to finish digging, eager to unleash the
life-giving gush onto the protected fields. It never ceased to gratify
his heart to see each pond filled to the brim, so that they had all
that they should need. Even Nibs smiled to watch the sun sparkling on
the water–he had seen enough of sere lands on the way to know what
treasure lapped the surrounding stones. Nibs bent to the water,
splashed his entire head, and then soaked his hat before plopping it
back on, to cool the rest of his labors. Frodo laughed; small wonder
that hats in his family never kept their shape through a summer.
Clouds amassed on the horizon. “Wait,” Frodo whispered. “Wait please,
until after our night’s business–and then rain down as much as you
desire, O Mordor-bound maiar of water and air, and refill our ponds
again. I know that I have no right to ask, as stained as any spirit in
this land, but wait please anyway, in hope of better days and cleaner
souls to come. I will hope beside you, and together we shall make this
land a place for people better than ourselves.”
Remembering his sin, Frodo looked over at his uncle in his dripping
hat, grateful to have not, after all, snipped that particular thread in
the Web of Life. “No sense brooding on it,” he told himself as he
returned to his work. “It will make itself plain soon enough, I
suppose, whoever it must be.”
He gazed out over the fields, and the village down below, at all of the
men and women at their labors, and at the children beside them, helping
as they could or playing within line of sight. Then something opened up
in Frodo’s heart. Because it might have been any one of them that he
had cut short, they all became infinitely precious to him. Every one of
them, somebody’s Ma or Pa or brother or sister or spouse, uncle or
aunt, child or friend. Had some wizard, at any point in his life, asked
him if there could be such a thing as an expendable person, he would
have answered, “No, I suppose not,” and would have thought that saying
so made him a good person. But because he had found himself put to the
test and had failed, because he had shortened some unknown life to save
Mattie, the question left the realm of the hypothetical–now, too late,
he felt in the flesh his kinship to all who lived. His remorse became a
beauty aching in his breast, and his delight in his fellow creatures
became a pain that he would not want eased.
After the noon meal Frodo left the field for Nibs to supervise. He,
Bergil and Fishenchips, and the other chosen warriors, repaired to
their beds to catch some rest before they faced the night ahead. Frodo
tossed back and forth across the width of his new and broader bed,
trying to find a cool spot, certain that he could never rest in the
hottest hours of the day–and then he fell into a heat-stunned sleep
after all, the distant clamor of the anvil weaving into his dreams,
armored knights clanging at each other rhythmically in a strange
martial dance, while a beautiful woman looked on, smiling, at the blood
that rained down, drenching the fields.
“What on earth were you dreaming?” Mama asked him as she woke him for
breakfast. “You looked plumb horror-stricken in your sleep.”
“I don’t know, Mama, and I don’t care,” Frodo answered, “now.” His
mother stepped out while he dressed, but he knew that she stood close
to the door. “I’ve got work to do. There’s blight in the potato-patch,
and Papa and I need to stop it before it spreads.”
“Nibs’ll help,” she said, taking his arm as he left his bedroom. “You
can count on my brother, son. Don’t let the gossips fool you–you can
always trust our Nibs.”
“Oh, is he well enough to work, do you think?”
“Just as good as gold,” his mother said with a smile. “Better than
gold, in fact. He doesn’t hold with gold for very long, you know–and
you shouldn’t neither. It never did your namesake any good.”
“Thank you, Mama–I shall remember that.”
She kissed his cheek at the door. “Don’t you go messin’ with foreign queens, neither. They can break even the stoniest heart.”
Frodo laughed. “Ma, I’m married, now–remember?” Then he went to join
the menfolk at labors that did not sit long in the memory, yet
satisfied him deeply throughout the heat-drenched day. They moved
rhythmically to a metallic drum played by a footless old Nurning
sitting by the fields. Happily they labored, side by side, till the
sunset burned down to its embers, then they made their way home in a
glow of contentment.
Someone kept knocking at the door. His family tried to ignore it,
sitting by the fireside at Bag End. The knocking would not let up.
Mattie pursed her lips over her knitting, working the needles faster.
Several times Frodo started to stand up and go for the door, but each
time, his father would grab his arm and pull him down again. “There’s
nobody you want to entertain, this time of night. There’s nobody decent
out there.” But at last Frodo broke free and headed for the door, if
only to get away from the fire (what had possessed his father to build
it up so high in the middle of summer?) and get a breath of cool night
air.
He opened his eyes before the door, however...and found himself lying
on sweat-soaked sheets, in his tower-room, in Mordor. The late light
showed him that night must soon fall upon the town.
Frodo donned his clothes and went down the stairs, Sting heavy on his
belt. He stepped out under a brilliant sky as the sunset caught fire;
he glanced towards the west sometimes as he went, but he did not stop
for it. “I must commission lower windows, bay windows perhaps, so that
I can enjoy such sights more often,” he told himself. Men joined him,
walking towards the fields by twos and threes, nobody saying a word.
And they all bore swords. By the time they reached the top of the
fields, the first stars had begun to show up high in the east. Hands
loosened blades in their sheaths all around him, and he did likewise.
Lanethil joined the band, carrying the torch. He looked slimmer than
the men and yet strong, as deadly-graceful in his moves as Kitty, wide
of eye and wild of hair, beautiful and dangerous, firelight chasing
across his features. Behind him, hard and sturdy women bore bundles of
wrygrass-straw tied up so tightly that these could serve for logs. It
surprised some to see the herbwife, “Dinwen”, among them, but Frodo
nodded–all of the bravest in the village had gathered indeed. She,
however, lived up to her adopted name and said no word, and he let her
have her silence in peace. By now the sunset had deepened to bloody
hues, fading into a smoky murk. The last, deep violet light spread over
the world.
“Wait,” Lanethil said, softly, “until the wind changes.” The men stood
and they waited, still saying nothing, though howls in the distance
made their scalps prickle, all eyes on the torch and on which way the
flames bent. More stars came out. Women scattered some of the straw
across the potato-field, then piled bundles particularly upon the place
that had poisoned Nibs. Crickets sang loudly in the fields, and bats
danced twittering over a nearby pond, darting after insects. Some of
the women hastened down the slopes, then, to their homes, eyes often
glancing back over their shoulders, but others went to stand beside
their men, drawing daggers out. The sky continued to darken. Moths
battered them, all diving for the torch-fire, but the people hardly
moved. When full dark had fallen the fire bent away from the sea and
the village below the plateau. “Now,” Lanethil said, and plunged the
torch into the straw.
It caught quickly, spreading through the potato plants. Flames leaped
and grew, driving back the darkness with a blaze of orange light that
fluttered over faces and tunics, glinting in eyes and on the naked
blades of swords and knives. Frodo brought around a small barrel, and
every man and woman dipped their kerchiefs into its water, then bound
the cloths over their mouths and noses, as he had already done. The
smell of smoke still came through, and sometimes stung the eyes, but
hopefully no one would breath particles of anything deadly tonight.
The flames looked weird in a lovely kind of way, how they wavered and
danced across the field, smoke curling around the roots of burning
plants, sparks crawling through leaves like living things, more smoke
and sparks spreading upwards into the night sky, billowing away. Frodo
coughed and let the women tend to their task of limiting the fire’s
scope. He turned outward like the men, his little sword in hand for
whatever good it might serve; he gazed half-blinded for a moment from
having stared into the fire, but soon adjusting to the dark in a way
that no one else save Lanethil could do. Their shadows writhed before
them with flashes of orange light spilling out between. Beyond them,
though, the village looked so peaceful. In the dark you could forget
where you were.
Long they stood thus, as the firelight slowly died, but they had to
stay even after the last flame failed, protecting the women who watched
the ground smoulder, their eyes gleaming in the lurid red glow, making
sure that no fire leaped up again, rekindled from buried sparks when
least expected. A sleepy contentment stole over Frodo. Maybe fathers
felt like this, protecting what they loved. He remembered dreaming
something pleasant about farming with his father. What had his mother
told him about not taking gold?
A voice called out in the distance, too far to distinguish. Frodo
snapped back to full awareness. What need might drive someone out at
night, without a whole company of sword-bearers? The voice called
again, this time so close that he almost made out the words, and could
almost place who the voice belonged to. Then it called a third time:
“Fishenchips? Is that you?”
Frodo’s heart raced with recognition!
“Fish, can ya help me, man? Come help me to the fire.”
Harding grabbed the hook and would not let go. “Don’t answer,” he said quietly. “It cannot be who it sounds like.”
“Fishenchips–help me! I’ve been so cold for so long...”
Frodo thought he glimpsed something, and his hair stood on end. Nearby he heard the hiss of Lanethil’s drawn breath.
Fish pulled his hook free and immediately Harding leaped in front of
him, sword out. But the former sailor cried, “Are ye mad? Can’t ye hear
who that is? ‘Tis Captain Watersheen!” He rushed the guard–metal
clashed on metal as a silhouette drew near with lurching steps.
Harding protested, “No that is not
who calls ye, man!” Other men leaped forward to stop the sailor/healer,
and some turned the other way, swords braced before them towards where
they’d heard the voice.
“But he’s injured!”
Frodo whispered, behind his kerchief, “Injured isn’t half of it,” staring at what Fish couldn’t make out in the dark.
Fishenchips pleaded, “He needs help!” Again he tried to dart around the
swords; the cloth fell from his face, revealing his agony. “The
shipwreck...Leech lived, why not Watersheen?”
“Leech came back months ago,” Harding answered him.. “Think, man–nobody
could have survived this long. Now step back afore I cut ye.”
Fish bellowed, “If anybody could, the Captain would! Lemme past!” He
tried to dodge around the blades, though he nicked himself more than
once, caring nothing for his own blood. ”Lemme past!”
A dark form loomed on the edge of human sight. Frodo stared at details
that no mortal eyes could see but his, and the full shock drove all
words from his throat.
“Fishenchips–help me!” Watersheen’s voice cried out, closer still. “I’m sooo cursed cold, man, I can hardly move–I need ya!”
Fish roared in anguish, battling back the swords with his own and his hook, sustaining more cuts, but nobody would let him past.
“Fish, please!” The newcomer begged. “Who else believed in ye? Who else
stood by ye when the rest o’ the crew despised ye? Who else slipped ye
Belzagar’s ring when t’others looked away to toss his body overboard?”
“Only Watersheen’d know that!” Fishenchips broke free and ran
forward–and so did Frodo. The man fell with a scream, his foot pinned
to the ground by Sting.
Panting for air, Frodo squeezed the man’s shoulder like Fish faced
another amputation. Then the hobbit looked up, and terror froze him in
place.
Captain Watersheen stood before him, very near, the ember-light
glinting on his troubled countenance as he leaned on a staff of
driftwood. In the darkness Fishenchips could not have seen the seaweed
that draped his shoulders with the rags of his chemise. Only Frodo,
with his enhanced night vision, could spy the tiny black crab that
crept out over the rim of that rimy boot, scuttling down to the ground.
Only Frodo, up this close, saw those eyes, filmed over with a pallid
slime, and the ghostly green that glowed behind them. But worst of all,
he saw the wind briefly blow back the tatters to reveal nothing between
hip and rib save for a roiling, tortuous fog.
The Captain broke into a friendly grin, spoiled by the sand fleas that
escaped his lips. “Well, if it ain’t the hobbit–Master Gardner, I
should say.” He extended a fish-nibbled hand to Frodo, a couple of
knuckles showing bone. “I haven’t forgotten the dried apples that ye
shared. Will ye come and tip a shot o’ grog with me in fair exchange?”
Frodo stumbled back, his empty sheath slapping against his leg. “No.
Noooo. I don’t know how you know these things, but you are not Watersheen.”
He backed into Fishenchips and fell, while the man groaned and pried at
the Elvish knife impaling his foot. “Have ye all gone mad? That’s him!
That’s him!”
Sudden light flared up again. Lanethil ran forward between the men,
whirling a bundle of straw around and around in bright circles,
whipping it into new flame. In the orange glare everyone could suddenly
see clearly the horror that stumbled back, its rotting arms raised up
in fear. But the elf showed him no mercy–he flung the brand. Then the
bones and rags, the dried seaweed and the parchment-shriveled remains
of flesh, took fire. The flames soon leaped up twice the man’s height,
as they watched the skeleton within crumble, and then something went
shrieking up into the sky, visible only as a disturbance shooting
through the smoke.
While Lanethil stamped out the last of the fire, and the women keened
(in a tired, practiced way) for Watersheen’s ashes on the wind, Harding
strode forward, and with a muscled wrench jerked Sting from
Fishenchip’s foot. Fish cried out in pain, but no pain of flesh alone
caused him to collapse sobbing with his head landing in the hobbit’s
lap.
Grimly Harding said, “Ya sailors consign yer dead to the deeps, but
betimes they wash ashore, where unclean things borrow ‘em--even to
borrowin’ whatever imprints o’ memory remain on what’s left o’ the
brains--and then send ‘em lurchin’ into town, some nights.” He watched
as “Dinwen” bound the healer’s foot, as wordless as ever. “‘Tis the
second time ye owe yer life to this hobbit, here. I hope ye know that.”
“I am so sorry,” Frodo said, stroking the dark hair so much like his
Uncle Hamson’s, “but I couldn’t stop you any other way. Better hurt
than dead.”
Then Dinwen broke her silence to say, “You aimed well, little friend,
striking mostly between the toes. He shall walk tenderly for awhile, by
crutch or by cane, but he shall come to no harm in the long run.” Then
a shudder shook her entire body as she gazed at the smudge where
Watersheen’s body had unnaturally stood. “That kind...I know more about
that kind than of old. It wanted a better body than the one it had
found. You did the right thing, Frodo.”
Harding detailed off two armed men to see Fishenchips safely delivered
into Elenaril’s care, followed by Dinwen carrying a torch in one hand
and a bare sword in the other. Frodo thought that she almost looked
like her old self. The rest of them continued their vigil until dawn,
making sure that the burnt potato-field did not spread its smoulder.
They had planned a day shift to take over after them, but they had no
need. At the sun’s first light a gentle rain began, as sad and sweet as
a penitent’s tears. Hissing steams went up wherever it found hidden
coals. Frodo watched it, saying nothing, until puddles began to form.
Then he turned and walked home in the rain.
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