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The Road goes ever on and
on… And Passages, new and old, are always at hand. (Which is just a fancy way of saying no, the hobbits aren't about to let me off the hook just yet.)
There will soon be several new stories including
Metamorphosis
(the prequel to
Symbiosis)
I—Eclipse ______________________________________
"I know." She had leapt from the pony and sprinted over to him before he could breathe; the slap knocked his head sharply aside, and just as she took aim to deliver another, Paladin grabbed her wrist. "I know only because I received the same sort of letter you have!" It stilled her. She stared at him, mouth working, then pulled away, turned away. "Sister," he pleaded. "I would have told you. I would have—" "Stopped them?" Paladin hesitated, then said, very slowly, "I Saw nothing of their leaving. Yet now I See no way that we could have—should have—stopped them." "Are they alive?" "Em—" Esmeralda whirled back to face him. "Tell me
that you've Seen this much. Do they live? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Such a lovely home you have here." The Man's voice was low, almost sibilant; he managed grace despite his obvious age and the way he had to double himself, knees deeply bent, to make his way through the smial. Every now and then he would pause, eyes gleaming within his cowl as he took notice of his surroundings; the thin, elegant hands would reach out, run along a smooth wood moulding, pick up a particularly interesting vase, or picture. Lobelia didn't care for the way he was eyeing up the silver in particular. "This is the Outlander patron I've been telling you about, Mother," Lotho said. "And does this Outlander who promises to make us rich have a name?" Lobelia demanded, crossing her arms. Lotho gave her a warning hiss, but the visitor dropped his chin into his chest and chuckled. "Your mother is quite correct. My manners are atrocious." The
elegant hand reached out once more, this time for Lobelia; she
slowly extended her own hand and the cowled head bowed most
deferentially over it. "It is a pleasure to make your
acquaintance, Mistress Sackville-Baggins. I am called
Sharku." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A silence met the old hobbit's words. In the distance could be heard the crackle of flames, the shouts of Men, the screams and curses of hobbits. "Block the outer burrows," Rorimac ordered, and out of habit the old hobbit turned to spread the order, only to be stopped as another voice growled into the thick tension. "That won't do it. We're spread too far," Saradoc said. "We can't possibly defend the outskirts." He thought for a few moments—it seemed eternities, but they all waited, for while the Master was slow to his conclusions, they were usually the right ones. "Wind the Horn. Bring everyone to the inner bowl, have them fetch only what they can carry, no more. Leave the fruit to burn and hope the flames don't reach the cornfields or the gardens. And..." he paused, eyes darkening. "Open the sluice gates." "Sara—" his wife said, softly, and he could see the panic, slow-growing, in her eyes. "We've no choice. Flood will stop the fires, keep those ruffians from tunnelling into the inner bowl and mayhap, just mayhap, save what will be left of Buckland once they're finished!"
The Man grinned, showing ruined teeth. "And who's going to make me, little one? You?" Merimac started forward. "I said, get—!" He was choked into sudden silence as he was lifted and dangled mid-air, a huge hand about his throat, his hands trying to span too-broad wrists, his feet kicking furiously, ineffectually. "Silly little rabbit," gloated the Man. "Do you really think—Aiee!" He fell back with a howl, clutching at his side where a ribbon of blood had burst through filthy fabric. "This rabbit," Merimac growled, rolling to his feet and brandishing his dagger, "has teeth." Out of the shadows, the crew of Gillyflower drew close; a loose semicircle of flashing steel and glittering eyes, flanking their leader. "Didn't ye hear the Cap'n?" Munro rasped. "Get off his ship."
Awake! Fear! Fire! Foes! Awake! He had only heard it once in his life before: the Horn of Buckland. Awake! Awake! Fire! Foes! Awake! And wondered, briefly, if it was to be the last.
"You've come to the right place," Lily Cotton reassured. Behind her, Rose and Tom were assisting the Gaffer to a pallet in front of the kitchen hearth. "Big Tom has gone for the Widow; oh dear, oh dear, we can only hope she's not met the same fate…" Lily passed out steaming cups all around. "We've got to stick together, now, and be strong. Drink your tea, Daisy; you girls, mind now and drink your own." Marigold, wide-eyed with shock, obeyed without a sound. May asked, the beginnings of hysteria in her voice, "Is Da all right? They hit him so hard…"
"You…" The lead lieutenant gaped. "You want us to take… the Took?" "I've been lenient long enough, and well I know to whom I owe this latest insult. That jumped-up pony farmer will pay for this. I don't care how you do it, but you will bring Paladin Took to Bag End, in chains if necessary!"
"What do you mean, I can't—?" Merry started to angrily protest, but Frodo interrupted, eyes boring flatly into the Shirriff's. "What of the Hall, then?—and consider your words both quickly and carefully, for I do not think my cousin is inclined to wait gently for an answer…"
How to condemn them, when a malevolent entity that even the basest of these others hadn't even dreamt of had taken up residence against and within his own breast; how to even contemplate ending their time when time yet curled about his neck, when forever whispered in his ears and all the yesterdays ever known were yet another tick, another click upon the timepiece of awareness weighting and pinning him; how to feel anything but a sick and shattered ennui when faced with those who thought to seek that supposed pinnacle of evil power… for did they know, truly know, the immortal never-ending fetters of what they aspired to they would run, shrieking, from the flames. Even the Dark Lord, when the eternal firestorm had taken him, had screamed amidst his laughter…
"You have no idea—!" Paladin whirled on him, eyes a-flame, and for the first time Pippin saw the ghosts behind those eyes, heard the empty wailing just beyond ordinary consciousness—the baen sidhe keening her children's deaths. Paladin visibly took control of himself, said through his teeth, "Do you really think I didn't try to help them? And when I did, d'you think they welcomed me? No, they crawled on their bellies to lick Lotho's feet and would have delivered me to the Sharku. "The Shire! It's heart lies here, Peregrin Took, here more than any far-flung village that toadied to Lotho Sackville-Baggins, and well you know it, being what you are, what we are! And if to save that heart I had to cut off the head, then so be it!"
"What's right? What's right is that he be here, with us! He tends to every garden but his own, doesn't he?—leaves us to lie fallow, barren… I'm not brave, I'm no Hero; all I could do when the Troubles came was wait, and hope, but hoping's not enough anymore, is it?" Rosie came up behind him, wrapped her arms about his waist, clung so tightly as to make him gasp. "I'm not clever, but I can see what's happening, I can see it even if he won't, and the Shadow-times aren't gone, are they?—not from this smial, not from your eyes; they're here, between us, and they're taking you away…"
"Then why can't I see Her? Why can I not even hear Her?"
Rose said nothing, merely held closer to Sam as they both watched the solitary figure ride into the East, nearly translucent before the rising of the sun.
He thought he was silent, just another one of the shadows lingering against curved walls, but Frodo shifted. Those eyes, so cold and silver-flat against the hearth, lit and limned with gilt as they turned to him, so quickly that Merry would have wondered if he'd imagined it… If he didn't know better. If he'd not seen it too many times already…
Nay. To see one of those fae ships again would break my heart. "Why?" Frodo whispered, and it hung heavily in the salt-sweet air, giving the lie. He knew why; he remembered those words as if it had been only yesterday, himself a confused tween and the bistre locks tangled in his fingers not so liberally frosted with grey. It was all gossamer, and stars. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. I'm not sure that hobbits are meant to bear such things. "Then I'm no longer sure I'm still a hobbit, dear friend," he whispered, so gently as not to break even this one's light slumber. "For I see gossamer and stars behind my eyes even during the day's light. I'll bear it for you, shall I?—bear it once more for all of us, and in doing so perhaps salve the breaking if I can…"
"You're right," Esmeralda stated, all too quietly. "I haven't. But there is one thing I have always understood." "About Frodo?" he scoffed. "No, about you. And the power he has always had to hurt you."
"You know I have," Merry answered, and his voice grated, as if the words came unwillingly. "But you also know I've never had the courage to ask him. Some things—" "Have no words," Pippin finished, then tipped his glass to Merry with a grin, ghastly though it was. "He's taught us well." "Sam speaks of it." "I know. And that too makes me wonder..." He looked down, inspected closely his glass. "Merry, for all Sam did for Frodo, went through with him, does Sam... know? Truly? Or even want to?" "Pip—" "I know… I know! Neither of us could have done what Sam did for him, I'll love Sam to the death because of it and so many other things as not to mention, yet I can't let it go, can I?--not there, not now, not when I watch our cousin drowning in his own... mind." Pippin closed his eyes, took another gulp of his wine. "I canna' help but wonder at that will that wouldn't let up, and still won't. 'Tis endurance and survival beyond sense, not hope as Gandalf once said, and hope… it can be blind, can't it?--and often cruelly so." He shook his head. "When I consider that, all I can wonder is if the one thing you and I could have done for him was... well, was the one thing Sam couldn't."
"If I asked you, " Frodo pleaded, desperately soft, "would you let me go?"
Yet he knew that, should she open those eyes, there would be stars there, brilliant and pure, the blue of an autumn sky shot with fae-forged silver, and that was as it should be, as well… Oh, stars and fire she was real--real--and if everything he'd ever done only came down to this: this moment that couldn't crush him, this consciousness that didn't stretch out before him in thousands of throbbing possibilities or behind him in endless paths not taken and counted one by one, this small presence that gave back to him the now… And it was now she lay, warm and quiescent beneath his maimed hand, reminder that not everything he touched turned to ruin and he simply stood there, simply being, helpless and willing witness to her breathing, to the little twitches and grimaces of a child's slumber, and he was taken by nothing but her sweet, silken abandon. "Your father," Frodo whispered, "loves you, little flower. If you doubt everything else, never doubt that."
And suddenly, it slows, all of it. The voices within fade from harsh accusations to muted whispers; the sun above is a warm radiance, not the harsh brilliance it had become; his heart slows from desperate race to steady thud and dub, his lungs expand, open, no longer to labour against knife-sharp air but to breathe, without pain. Staccatoed, frantic seconds slur into moments, moments stretch, and hum, a soft, husky aria as existence itself spins out… Slows… Blurs… Stays… Into Forever…
"I think," he said as he knelt down before her, "that it's past time I relinquished it." Her fingers brushed first the faded knotwork, then reached out and brushed the silvered strands at his temple. "Aye," she finally said. "'Tis time, indeed, o Winter's King."
-------- Coming in 2008 |
