Chapter 10: Possible Dreams

Sam laughed when Elanor’s pudgy little hands reached up to touch Frodo’s face a few weeks after she was born. Frodo looked up from the baby in his arms and laughed with him and Sam’s heart shouted with joy. Elanor had immediately wrapped her arms around Frodo’s heart and soothed it in a way no one else could. He could spend the whole morning writing, emerge looking exhausted and haunted, but then pick up Elanor and she’d coo for him and all the weariness and pain would slip away and peace would come. His brightness always flared when he was with his honorary niece and she was perfectly content to be with him. Sam wished he could have caught it all in his hand and preserved it forever.

“I did for you, darling,” Frodo would murmur to her as he stroked her curls and rocked her to sleep in the chair he had brought for her parent’s wedding. “I did it for you.”

Many a night he sang to her in Sindarin and Sam would stand there and listen to his loving, beautiful voice. Frodo never sang anymore, except to her. Sometimes the songs were haunting and sad, but soothing even then because of the way he sang them. Sometimes that would be only she would calm, especially after she started teething. Rose was very glad he did that and would often stop to listen herself, though she always stood behind him because many of his songs and the simple sight of them together often brought her to tears. Sam never missed it and Rose would often see him with a proud, loving smile as he watched his brother and daughter.

A few months after Elanor was born, Sam started her along with him on his picnics with Frodo and sat back content to watch his brother hold her and play with her, smiling and laughing and for a little while, forgetting how badly he was hurt. Sam imagined that when she was older, she would toddle over to Frodo and he would scoop her up and twirl her around or walk with her, hand-in-hand, and how he would do that with all the children and how vital a part he would be in their lives. Such dreams were possible in the bright sunlight.

* * *

Sam watched his beloved brother sit in the bright summer sun on the bench in the garden. A book was open on his lap, but Frodo was looking off into the distance somewhere, trembling even in the warmth of the day. Sam shook his head sadly as he approached and put a blanket around his friend’s shoulders.

Frodo clasped it tightly around him and looked up at Sam with a wan smile. “Thank you, Sam.”

The young gardener smiled back sadly at Frodo’s pale face. “It’s not getting better, is it?” he asked. “You seemed so happy when Elanor was born.”

“I was, Sam, truly, but no, it’s not. I’m sorry.”

Sam sat down next to his brother and put his arm around Frodo’s shoulders. Frodo leaned his head against his guardian’s shoulder.

“That’s it, my dear,” Sam encouraged. “Lean on your Sam. Get warm. And stop this thinking that you have to apologize.”

Frodo smiled. “Yes, Sam,” he said meekly.

They sat silently there for a few moments more. Sam could feel Frodo tremble and rubbed his arm to try to warm him.

“I used to love the spring and summer,” Frodo said quietly. “All the life coming back from the dead of winter. I wish I could do that, too. But the winter remains in me. I am nothing but a frost-blasted landscape.”

“No, dear, no,” Sam soothed, “you are nothing like that. You are hurting, but you will come back. You can’t give up hope.”

“It hurts so much to keep hoping, Sam, and have so little to show for it.”

“You have to keep doing it though, dear. Remember that tree in Gondor that Mr. Pippin showed us? It hadn’t bloomed in who knows how long, but it was still guarded vigilantly, hopefully, for the day that it would. That was a dying hope too, but it never completely withered and the people were rewarded in the end. We saw the first flowers ourselves, didn’t we? So don’t let me hear any of this giving up hope for yourself. If you don’t have any left, then take some of mine.”

Deeply moved by his friend’s words, Frodo slipped his arms around Sam’s, burrowed his head into his chest and listened to that beloved heartbeat. “Oh, my dearest Sam, every dream seems possible when you are near, even the impossible ones,” he murmured. “How would I ever live without you?”

Sam kissed his head. “You will never find out because I am never going to leave you.”

But I may have to leave you, my friend, my brother, Frodo thought miserably. Oh, my Sam, how can I do that?

“I’m so tired, Sam,” he said. “Tired of everything.”

“Then take your rest right here, my dear,” Sam said. He brought his brother’s head down into his lap and stroked his curls gently. “You aren’t going to get better if you are always exhausted.”

“Thank you, Sam,” Frodo said, then he closed his eyes. Sam felt him relax and his breathing even out as sleep claimed him and at last he stopped shaking.

Rose entered the garden then, holding Elanor. Sam looked up at his beloved wife and child and smiled, then looked down at Frodo again. “He’s hurting so badly, Rose. I don’t know what else to do.”

Rose watched as her husband continued to stroke Frodo’s curls and back gently. “You’re doing it,” she said. “You’re loving him.”

“I’ve loved him even before I met him, but I wonder if it’s enough anymore. The Ring did terrible things to him, such terrible things.”

Tears grew bright in Rosie’s eyes as she heard how haunted her Sam’s voice was. She wanted just to hold him and take him away from whatever he was remembering, but she bit her lip against asking what those memories were. She knew he wouldn’t tell her so she just ached silently for him and for Frodo. She looked at the latter’s face, relaxed now in sleep, under the care of a beloved one’s touch. “He’s so peaceful looking now,” she said. “So beautiful.”

“Yes, even now. But he’s hurting, Rose, still hurting so much. It’s not fair. The Ring is gone. Why isn’t his pain?”

Rose leaned down to kiss her husband’s head. “He’s not hurting now. You just keep loving him, my Sam. That’s what he needs.”

Sam looked up at her and squeezed her hand. He smiled at the vast pools of love he saw in her eyes and she smiled back, gazing into the same love in his, directed all at her. How did she get so lucky? She remembered wondering that aloud once when Frodo was nearby and the elder hobbit had laughed softly and shook his head and then admitted he had been trying to figure that out for years. “He’s love, Rose,” he had told her. “That’s all he is. Just pure, deep, ever abiding love. And we are just lucky enough to have him spoil us terribly with it.” Rose’s smile deepened at the happy memory. She squeezed her husband’s hand back and then disappeared back into their home.